No Labor Like Love
by LoquaciousQuark
Summary: Hawke is pregnant. Fenris copes as best he can; everyone else laughs from a distance. A series of unconnected vignettes spanning the pregnancy of a Champion.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **I have no excuse for this. Absolutely none. My only defense is that if I write stuff like When Light Grows Less during periods of extreme stress, this is what I write when I'm perfectly content and relaxed and generally pleased with the world. I can't even pretend this isn't the sappiest thing I've ever written. I just...hope you enjoy it anyway?

I'm _so sorry_. (Okay. Not that sorry. Shh.) However, if you're concerned about emotional whiplash, I recently filled a series of kiss meme prompts on my tumblr (same username as here) that may help ease the transition. They're all tagged "kiss meme" and most of them feature Hawke & Fenris. So, you know. If you're interested.

Anyway. Have some fluff. :)

* * *

**No Labor Like Love**

-.-

"Well," Hawke says, leaning on the mantle, "I'm pregnant."

For a long moment there is no sound save Fenris's fingers tightening on the pages of his open book; then, very slowly, he looks up to meet her eyes.

"You are," he says, quite articulately, "what."

"With child," Hawke offers. "Expecting. In the family way." She makes a circle with her thumbs and forefingers and lays it over her stomach. "A little half-elf bun in the oven, if you prefer metaphor."

Fenris closes his eyes and opens them again in the dazed way of someone recently struck with a large brick. "I thought—you took a tea."

"Oh, I do. Every week, regular as clockwork."

"And…even so…"

"Many happy returns," Hawke tells him. "Your sheer virility has put the rest of Thedas to shame."

It is a mark of his absolute bewilderment that Fenris neither notices her sarcasm nor retorts to it. Instead he simply stares at her from the cheerful sunlit couch in her study, book forgotten on his knee, and blinks. (She counts three blinks before he tries to speak again. He must be very thrown indeed.) "You are sure of this."

"Oh, quite." She pushes away from the unlit hearth and crosses the room, hands on her hips. "Anders was kind enough to diagnose me—" she glances out the open window at the sky, ignoring the pleasant breeze that tugs at her hair, "—oh, about thirty minutes ago. Perhaps three-quarters of an hour."

Fenris makes a choked, inarticulate noise and the book slides from his lap to the red-striped cushion beside him, forgotten. "You went to the abomination with this?"

"Well, yes," Hawke drawls, reaching him, knocking his knee with her own. "That's what one does when one can't heal what's ailing one. One goes to one's spirit-possessed healer."

"He might be mistaken."

"I suppose so, but it seems a very common thing to get so wrong." She shrugs, bumping his knee again, then rocks back on her heels. "We'll find out in a few months, regardless."

"We'll find—" Fenris repeats, and then he stands so quickly he nearly knocks her from her feet. He grabs at her arms, gripping her until she is steady again. Then he tells her very seriously, "Hawke. You cannot be with child."

"Considering the last few months? Oh, I'm relatively certain I can."

"No—no. Hawke. This city is too—our _lives—_" His hands tighten on her arms and Hawke tugs at his wrists, forcing him to loosen his hold. He barely notices. "Kirkwall is far too dangerous for an infant."

"Then we'll just have to change Kirkwall, I guess." She ticks off her fingers briefly, thinking. "We have—oh, seven months or so to get it right."

"Seven months," Fenris says—and there is that brick-blinded look again, and when Hawke pokes him in the chest he sinks heavily back to the couch. She prods him again in the forehead with her forefinger, gently, but he does little more than bury his face in one hand and mutter something in Arcanum that she has no hope of understanding.

_Ah, well_, she thinks through a tightening throat. She expected this. "So there you have it. Just give me a little advance notice before you start running. I'd like to be out of the terrified-elf flight path if I can."

His head comes up at that. He stares at her a moment and blinks again (only once, this time), and fists his hands on his knees. The room is very quiet, the calm hush unbroken even by birdsong or passing voices outside the window, and when neither of them moves that same soft breeze whispers in through the open glass to trail through the ends of their hair. Then: "Hawke," he says, careful and blank and somehow so—lost. "You're truly expecting a child?"

"Yes."

His mouth works on the next word, the very thought seeming to overwhelm him. "Mine."

"Yes."

Fenris does not close his eyes this time, does not blink in stupefaction. Instead he pushes to his feet and crosses to the window, and after a minute's silent perusal of the neighbor's ivy-covered wall he turns to look at her again. "What would you have me do?" he asks, and his eyes are so shuttered she cannot read them.

She—was _not _expecting this, and Hawke finds herself without an answer. "What do you mean?"

"Just that." He spreads his hands between them, palm-up, empty and plaintive. "Hawke, I know—nothing of these things. Of…children. You know this."

"Oh, and I do?"

"More than I," he says evenly, though this time she hears the tremor of uncertainty in his voice—but it is more than uncertainty, _deeper _than that: a complete and paralyzing fear of his own ignorance.

Helplessly, she tells him, "I would have you stay."

_There_—the shutters crack at last, and even the sliver of terrible longing that slips through is enough to make her heart ache. "Someone else might serve you better."

"Someone else doesn't have half a baby inside me," Hawke says tartly, and when Fenris lets out a soft laugh that seems to surprise even him she follows to where he stands beneath the window. "If you want to go, then go. I won't hold you here against your will for a child you don't—care for. But if you do stay—if you _want _to stay, I—" She shrugs one shoulder, blinking back a sudden prickle of tears, and looks up through iron bars and glass to the clear, cloudless sky. "Well, I can't pretend I wouldn't prefer it."

"A ringing endorsement," he says drily, but the hand that finds its way to her cheek is not so steady as usual. "I told you I would remain at your side."

"Yes, well. Extenuating circumstances."

"Not so much as you believe," Fenris murmurs, bending until his forehead rests against hers. Hawke closes her eyes, breathes in, breathes out. His thumb slides over her cheekbone, over the faint lines at the corner of her eye; then his mouth presses gently to her mouth and she sighs, long and low, letting herself fold into him until his arms come around her and his strength bears up them both.

"Flames," she murmurs, and laughs against his lips. "I'm going to gain weight."

"Yes."

"And probably get very short-tempered."

"Probably."

"And crave all sorts of terrible, odd foods, and complain about my swollen ankles and my sore back and the hundred trips to the privy and all those peculiar…pregnant-y things."

"Hawke," Fenris says, pulling back until he can meet her eyes. "I will not leave you."

"So long as you know what you're promising," she whispers, and drops her forehead to his shoulder. She wants to say she is glad, and she wants to say she is happy—but this is only an hour new, only an hour since her world and Fenris's upended themselves, and in the unsettled chaotic mess of what remains Hawke cannot name her heart for _happiness_.

Odd relief, perhaps. Anticipation. A bare thin rind of hope.

Seven months is not enough.

—

"I am going to kill him," Hawke says flatly. "_Kill _him. I am going to rip off his testicles and—"

And _what_, she doesn't have the faintest idea, because nausea rises again like a flood and she bends over the chamber pot helplessly, cramping muscles doing their best to void a stomach already empty. Orana smoothes the hair from her forehead, her soothing murmurs meaning little behind her indulgent, poorly-hidden smile, and when Hawke at last sits back on her heels and wipes her sweating forehead Orana hands her the glass of water from her bedside table without ceremony.

"Finished for now, Mistress?"

"Until tomorrow morning," Hawke mumbles sourly, and manages all of three sips of water before her stomach rumbles ominously. She closes her eyes, presses the chilled glass to her forehead. "Skinny elf _bastard._"

"As you said yesterday, Mistress. And the day before that."

"And it was true then, too." She carefully twists sideways until she can lean against the side of the bed, and when she drops her head back on its rumpled coverlet Orana follows with a cool cloth to her cheeks. "You're a lifesaver, Orana."

"I spent many hours with the secluded women in Minrathous, while—while Papa and I were still there." She pulls the cloth away, turns it in her hands, replaces it. "I remember some things."

Hawke's mouth quirks, but she refuses to pry into Orana's pain so blithely, and instead she settles for briefly covering Orana's hand with her own. Then, as Orana rises and begins to straighten the bedcovers from the earlier panicked flailing for the chamberpot, Hawke asks, "Any last-minute suggestions, then?"

"Avoid becoming pregnant," Orana offers, and snaps the sheets into place.

Hawke grins. "You know, I remember you being so much less pointed with me once."

"Perhaps the child has already begun to affect your mind."

"Affect my—what? What does that mean?"

"I think I hear the door. Excuse me, Mistress."

"Orana, wait. Don't you—ooh, that _elf_—"

"What elf?" Fenris says, rounding the open doorway, and Hawke scowls at him from her place on the floor.

"Not you, too. I've had enough delicate condescension today already, thank you _very _much."

Fenris lifts an eyebrow, looks back to the hallway behind him. "Orana?"

"Oh, yes, innocent Orana, being all _patient _and _gentle_ just because I keep resorting to hyperbole in my constant and repetitive complaints."

"Ah," Fenris says after a pregnant pause. "I see."

"Do you?" Hawke asks, accepting the hand he proffers to help her to her feet. She straightens her house-robe, takes one last sip from the beading glass of water. "Because I notice your timing this morning was rather fortuitous, serah."

"A happy accident," Fenris tells her dryly.

"Why, Fenris. It's almost as if you don't care for the sight of uncontrollable vomiting."

"Aveline had a question concerning the mansion. It kept me longer than I expected."

"Excuses, excuses."

"Hawke," Fenris says, catching her arm to stop her airy sailing past him. There is no teasing in his voice now. "I meant to be here."

She swallows, abruptly regretting her own mockery. "I know," she says, and when his hand slides from her elbow to twine through her fingers she leans over, rests her forehead briefly against his own. "I'd kiss you good morning, but I'm not that cruel."

Fenris snorts, brushes his lips over her cheek. "At least your tempers are short-lived."

"For the moment, anyway," Hawke agrees. "If Orana keeps looking at me like I'm a fussy mabari I might just go to the docks and throw myself right off the pier."

"You said she was familiar with these things."

"Wonderfully so, dammit. I just want to whine."

"Mabari indeed," Fenris murmurs, and the corner of his mouth curls up despite Hawke's elbow in his ribs. "Your maid's insight is remarkable."

"So will your jabbering be once I've knocked out your teeth."

"Hawke," Fenris says, smiling, sliding one hand around the nape of her neck, "come downstairs."

"Only because you've asked so nicely," she mutters, but she does not try to check her own reluctant smile as his grip tightens on her hand. "Oh, _Fenris_. Don't you get tired of irritable complaints?"

He blinks at her, surprised; when he realizes she is serious he shakes his head. "It has been only a week. Consider it novelty if nothing else."

"I've always wanted be a sideshow." Hawke sighs, looping a finger in Fenris's belt, tugging aimlessly to hide her embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to snap at you. Even though I'll probably do it every morning for another two months. I promise I'll try not to."

A warm, lyrium-striped finger curls under her chin, lifts her face. Fenris kisses the corner of her mouth, gently; then he says, "Make this promise to your maid."

"Bastard," she mutters without heat, but his hand is warm on her skin and warmer when it falls to the small of her back, and this time when Fenris turns towards her bedroom door Hawke does not resist. Bastard elves and their _patience_, putting her own irritation to shame.

He even holds her hair later while she throws up breakfast, which, all things considered, she finds rather sweet.

—

Merrill is, of course, the first of their companions besides Anders to realize it. The discovery is sheer happenstance; Hawke arrives for the evening's Wicked Grace second only to Merrill, who is always early, and when Varric rises from his place at the great table's head to offer her a drink, Hawke declines. Merrill searches Hawke's face for something she doesn't know to hide, for some simple, harmless, innocuous hint—and just like that, Merrill knots her fists at her throat and gasps.

"You're _not_," she says, eyes wide. Hawke blinks, realizes, flushes—and Merrill puts the tips of her fingers to her lips. "You are?"

"Are what?" Varric asks, clearly sensing the keen edge of both mystery and marketability.

Hawke sinks into her seat opposite Merrill, her cheeks aflame. "I just. Ah. It's recent."

Varric's eyes narrow, but any questions he might have posed are curtailed by Merrill's hands clapping over her mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle her excitement. Even so Hawke can hear the squeal; then Merrill bursts from her seat in an unexpectedly quick and graceful motion and circles the table to wrap Hawke in an enormous, affectionate embrace.

"_When_?" she asks, leaning back a brief instant only to throw her arms around Hawke again. "Does he know? Creators, when did you find out? How are you feeling? Has anyone else—have you been terribly ill?"

"No—" Hawke tries, but she is already lost. "Er—yes. Ill, I mean—and—two weeks ago? I don't—he knows, at least, and Merrill, I'm so sorry, but I can't _breathe—_"

"Are you—" Varric's voice cuts through them both, and Hawke looks to him, startled. "_Hawke_," he says, and his voice is weak and thin and, for only the second time she can remember, entirely devoid of humor. "Are you pregnant?"

"Well," she says. "Yes."

"Oh, _shit_," says Varric, and he falls back into his chair. They stare at each other a moment in a way that would be comical in another life; then Varric leans forward again, rubbing a gloved hand over his beardless chin as if it might clear the numb surprise from his face. "Are you really?"

"My utter inability to keep breakfast down for the last few weeks does seem to point in that general direction, yes."

"And it's—the _elf's_?"

"Of course it is," Hawke says, stung, and Merrill slides an arm around her waist.

Varric spreads his hands, the blank look in his eyes beginning to recede behind contrition. "You're right. Sorry, Hawke. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just—didn't expect this. You said he knows?"

"Yes. I—yes. Anders confirmed it; I told Fenris."

"_Blondie_," Varric mutters, eyes narrowed in half-serious pique. "Feathered double-crosser. I've seen him three times in the last few days and he never breathed a word."

Hawke shrugs as Merrill releases her at last, the both of them returning to their seats. "What can I say? The man's good at keeping secrets. Varric, we didn't want the world to know just yet."

He snorts. "I don't think humans and dwarves are that different, Hawke. We would have noticed eventually."

"Noticed what?" Isabela says, sashaying through the door with bottles of liquor in each hand, and Merrill laughs as she leans forward and says, "Hawke's going to have a _baby_!"

For an instant a queer, clouded look flickers through Isabela's eyes that Hawke cannot name; then it is gone as if it had never been, and Isabela plunks both bottles on the table with a broadening grin. "Are you _really_," she purrs, lifting an eyebrow, and at Hawke's embarrassed laugh she drops into a chair and swings both booted feet to the lip of Varric's table, crossing them at her ankles. "Well, well, well. Papa Fenris. He'll have them gutting hearts by toddling age."

There's a short, sharp gasp from the doorway followed by the heavy clink of breaking glass, and the room as a whole looks to see Aveline with both hands at her mouth, Fenris glaring over her shoulder, a shattered bottle's worth of whiskey seeping into the stained floorboards at her feet. "I will not," Fenris mutters, and Aveline takes two drunken steps into Varric's suite.

"You're not pregnant," she says, as if daring Hawke to contradict her, and while she glares Fenris sidles around both her crossed arms and the spreading amber pool of whiskey to take the open place at the table beside Hawke. "You," Aveline adds, pointing to Fenris as if just realizing he is there, "did not get Hawke pregnant while the city is trying to fall apart around our ears."

"It wasn't exactly _intentional_," Hawke points out, though Aveline seems little-swayed by the admittedly weak argument. Beneath the table, Fenris's fingers come to rest on the curve of her knee.

Merrill sighs fondly. "That's one of the happier accidents, don't you think? Much better than dropping a hammer on your toe."

"That is _not _the _point_—"

"Oh, _bollocks_," comes a new voice, and Aveline steps aside to reveal Norah scowling at the mess of whiskey and broken glass, Anders and Sebastian flanking her with identical expressions of concern and confusion. "That was one of our best bottles." She scowls down at it, wrapping her hands in cloth to guard against the glass; then she seems to sense the unusual mood of the room and looks up. "Something wrong, gents?"

Isabela tips her chair back, jabs a thumb at Hawke. "The Champion's going to be a mother before the big girl is. Does that count?"

And as Norah blinks and Anders sighs and Sebastian catches a sudden, startled breath, Hawke drops her forehead to the table and groans.

—

They do seem happy for her, though, once the initial shock wears away and Varric manages to persuade them to start the game. Aveline loses three hands in a row asking what Hawke's done to prepare for the child (not much, Hawke points out, at only ten weeks along, and Aveline's face nearly purples); Isabela outlines her ten-year-plan to groom the child for piracy before youthful rebellion settles in despite Fenris's insistence that the child wear pants; Sebastian shakes both Hawke's hand and Fenris's despite the persisting astonishment that holds him mute, though after he settles to Fenris's other side the distraction of the cards seems to help him collect his thoughts again.

Hawke even manages to win a sizeable hand for once—perhaps not unexpected considering the state of mind of the assorted players—and as she gathers in her winnings Varric lets out a wry snort. "Should've seen that one coming."

"Hawke certainly didn't," Isabela points out under her breath, grinning, and Aveline makes a noise of wordless disgust.

"Don't worry," Hawke tells Varric, ignoring them both. "I'm sure once the novelty wears off I'll go right back to pleasant mediocrity."

"Speaking of novelty," Anders says from the other end of the table as he discards, "what's this going to mean for the Champion?"

"The Champion?"

Anders gestures at Hawke with the hand holding his cards, utterly failing to notice Isabela's blatant perusal of their showing. "The Champion. You. Are you going to keep fighting?"

"Of course," Hawke says, surprised, even as Fenris says in the same moment, "_No_."

There is a short, tense silence broken only by the cheerful chatter drifting up from the Hanged Man's main room. Fenris looks just as startled, as if, like she, he had not even considered the point worth discussing; then his mouth twists and she sighs, dropping her hand over his when it resettles on her knee and squeezing. "Apparently we'll have to talk about this. I'll get back to you, Anders."

"All right," he says slowly, looking between them. "I only mentioned it because there are some extra precautions you should take as a fighting mage."

"That's good to know. Isn't that good to know, Fenris?"

"Hmm," he says, though he does not pull away, and folds. Another awkward silence begins to loom, prickly and pointed; then Varric changes the subject rather gracefully, asking Merrill about the new litter of kittens she'd found outside her door in the Alienage. Anders picks up the thread and Sebastian carries it, and if Aveline throws one too many thoughtful glances their way Hawke chooses to ignore them.

Fenris folds again in the next round, allowing Hawke one more victory—but any hope of triumph Hawke might have had is thoroughly stamped as, over the next two hours, he proceeds to quietly and inexorably win from her every single one of her hard-earned sovereigns. He does not relent even when her mood begins to grow dark; neither does he lift his hand from her knee, even when she flicks his knuckles after a particularly irksome loss.

At last, once the squat white candles in the center of the table have begun to sputter and spark and even the noise from the main room has begun to grow less raucous, Isabela throws down her cards and shoves back from the table with a sigh. "That's enough for me," she says to no one in particular, looking meditatively at her sizeable stack of coins; then she produces a little leather bag from nowhere and sweeps them into it in one smooth gesture before standing and—very thoroughly—stretching.

"For me as well," Sebastian says, stifling a yawn, and just like that, the night is over.

They drift apart quietly, a few soft conversations here and there barely enough to match the scraping of chairs and the clink of collected winnings. Anders reminds her to come by the clinic again sometime in the next week; Merrill gives her another hug as Aveline squeezes her shoulder tightly, and even Isabela perks up enough to slink over for a comfortable grope. "Sleep well, pet," she murmurs in Hawke's ear, for once almost entirely innocently, and then she files out after the others and with the exception of Varric, Hawke and Fenris are alone.

She is so _terrible _with awkward silences.

And Varric doesn't even help with it, the slippery bastard; after a moment's deliberation he levers himself up from his great chair at the head of the table, wishes them both a pleasant evening, and completely fails to hide his paternal smile as he and Bianca disappear into his private room. They hear one warm chuckle—and the door closes behind him with a click.

Hawke scowls. Then sighs, then scowls again; and when Fenris shows no inclination to do more than carefully stack her—her!—sovereigns into a neat pile before him Hawke grunts and shoves up from the table. Too much energy to sit here and _stew_—and so without a better idea she begins to gather the empty glasses and bottles to one side of the table, to collect the scattered and forgotten cards and slide them into their cases again.

"The barmaid will do that," Fenris says suddenly, his voice low in the room's dying candlelight.

Hawke thumps an almost-empty tankard onto the broad wooden platter at the far end of the table, splashing a dribble of ale-froth into her own eye. She purses her lips, wipes it clean, then drops the tankard to the platter again with her head turned away this time. "I'm being useful. You did that on purpose."

"I did not drink."

Hawke rolls her eyes and flicks the Angel of Death at him with two fingers. "The _coin_, you twit."

Fenris catches the card, places it face-up on the table beside his winking stack of gold. He studies the painted figure for a moment, touching the edge of it; then he looks up and admits, "Perhaps it was petty of me."

"Perhaps," Hawke mutters, brushing a pile of unidentifiable crumbs to the floor. She blinks down at the untidy spray of them at her feet, abruptly frustrated beyond reason—at herself, at Fenris, at this stupid mess she's made—and drops heavily into Anders's abandoned seat. Sighing, she drags her hands over her face, muffling her voice with her fingers as she asks, "Do you really want me not to fight while I'm pregnant?"

There is a long, stretching pause. She can't quite find the strength to look up, to move even her hands from her face, but when at last Fenris answers her the words are clear enough in the quiet room. "I expected you to choose that yourself."

Hawke peels her fingers from her cheeks, props her chin on her palms as she looks to Fenris with the broad expanse of the now-cleared table between them. "I can't sit idle for seven months," she says, her voice flat. "I will lose my mind."

His mouth twitches as if to keep back a comment on the state of her mind—lost or otherwise—but Fenris says only, "I would never presume to confine you against your will."

"But you have an opinion."

Fenris begins to speak, hesitates, falls silent again. Hawke sighs, frustration giving way at last to understanding, and tilts her head on her hands. "You know," she tells him, more softly than she means to, "you _do _get to tell me what you'd prefer. Not that I promise to bend to your every whim, but—as the man I'm in love with and the father of my child…" she shrugs, embarrassed at his expression, "your opinion is rather important to me."

Fenris swallows, a hard, knotted thing that looks almost painful; then he stands, skirting the table and sticky pool of whiskey alike with swift, quiet steps until he has both hands on her shoulders, on her jaw, holding her in place as he bends to kiss her. It is soft and gentle and tender in way that Fenris rarely shows her, and when it is over he rests his forehead against hers and murmurs, "I do not want you to fight."

"Of course not," Hawke mumbles, covering his hands with her own briefly before giving him a gentle tug. He yields, turning to lean against the lip of the table as she drops his hands; his knee presses warm against her thigh and she sighs again, lacing her fingers together at her waist. "How about this?" she says after a moment. "We'll compromise. I'll check with Anders every week, and the first time he says it's no longer safe I'll stop. No questions asked."

"Hawke."

"_Fenris,_" she parrots, humor beginning to return_._ "What, don't you trust me?"

"With my life," he says without hesitation, but his jaw tenses. "With your own safety…I am not always convinced."

"How diplomatically said." Hawke quirks an eyebrow. "But it's not just my own safety anymore. I know that."

Fenris lets out a short, shallow breath, lips pinching together, but when his gaze flicks away from hers Hawke knows his irritated glances well enough to recognize it for acquiescence. She rises herself, an irrepressible smile tugging at her lips, and lets the fingertips of one hand come to rest on the smooth-polished table at Fenris's hip. He glances at her hand and then at her, one black eyebrow lifting in silent challenge, and Hawke slides her other hand to the wooden surface at his other side, effectively caging him against the table's edge.

"You aren't going to stay angry, are you?" she murmurs, her lips brushing, just barely, over the lyrium curving down his chin.

His hands lift to her waist, slip to press against the small of her back, to pull her more closely against him. "How long will you hold the coin against me?"

"I haven't decided yet," she tells him, and when he kisses her she does not try to keep back her low laugh.

They remain like this for several minutes, neither of them eager to break this unexpected moment of contentment, but just as Hawke begins to nudge her foot between Fenris's and Fenris's own grip begins to drift lower than her waist, Varric's door rattles with an almighty thumping crash, as if an enormous, dwarven-made boot has been thrown into it with full strength.

"No sex on my table!" Varric shouts, clear even through the wood and iron, and as Fenris stiffens like an iron poker Hawke throws back her head in laughter.

"I can think of better places anyway," she tells Fenris, dropping one last kiss on his nose at his reluctant smile; then she grips his hand in the last light of the melted white candles and, after a brief pause for Fenris to gather his ill-gotten gains into a pouch on his belt, they set off together into the night.

—

(It is nearly too much for him, he admits to her one night. He cannot believe he is granted these things.

So long as it's _nearly_, Hawke tells him, and holds his hand a little tighter.)

—

"I have a bump!"

"What?" Aveline shouts, ducking under a greatsword whistling over her head.

Hawke flattens her hand over her stomach for an instant, then swivels on her heel to blast a half-dozen solid spears of ice through the mercenary who'd been sneaking up on her. "A baby bump!" she calls over her shoulder, and smashes the bladed end of her staff across the mercenary's forehead. "I saw it this morning in the mirror!"

Aveline wallops the greatsword's owner in the face with her shield, following it with a quick thrust of her longsword through the woman's stomach. Blood sprays off the end of the blade as she yanks it free, hopping a few steps backwards towards Hawke, and Aveline's grimace flickers oddly in the sudden burst of orange flame spraying from Hawke's fingers at a pair of archers above them. "That happens, I hear," she says. "Anders, down!"

Across the square, Anders throws himself to his knees—and where his head had been two bolts thud into the assassin's throat in quick succession. She clutches at her collar, gasping wetly, and falls. "Thanks," Anders says, swallowing air as he pushes back to his feet, and Hawke glances up to the top of the Lowtown stairs behind her in time to see Varric grin.

"No problem, Blondie! Bianca, you're beautiful." Hawke hears the twang-ratchet-twang of two more bolts flying unerringly to their marks, and then Varric's voice drifts down to her through the clear morning air. "What was that about baby bumps?"

"I have one!" Hawke starts, but before she can finish a lithe, lightly-armored man flips a pair of daggers around his fingers as he darts towards Hawke, neatly dodging a pile of rubble fallen from the moldering wall. She takes two quick steps backward, staff raised—and her heel catches on a half-melted ice spear to stagger her. White teeth flash in a dangerous grin as Hawke's arms windmill frantically and the flat of one blade catches the morning sunlight in a keen flash; even as he flits towards her between the wall-cast shadows she manages to get one hand to her forehead and she _pushes_—

—and he goes flying backwards into the middle of the square, daggers catching in quick flaring arcs of light as they spin free of his grip.

"Got one for you, Aveline," Hawke calls, shoving away from where she has half-fallen against the wall.

"A little busy here, Hawke!" Aveline grits out, shield straining against the full weight of the overgrown warrior bearing down on her with a greataxe.

"Come on! He's _literally_ under your—never mind." Hawke jogs forward, flinging a careful fireball towards the blood mage facing off against Anders; when she reaches the groaning figure at Aveline's heels, she very precisely drives the end of her staff through his heart. "Anyway," she tells Aveline, absently touching a golden twist of rejuvenation to the back of Aveline's sweating neck, "I think I'm over the worst of the morning sickness. Now it's just the constant ache in my breasts and the fact that I can't _ever _get enough sleep that's giving me trouble."

Aveline grunts, throws off the man in full plate. "Your breasts are sore?"

"Like someone's run them over with a haycart. _All the time_."

"They haven't changed so far as I've noticed," Aveline says, rolling her head on her shoulders and shifting her weight to her toes as the warrior braces for another charge. "Do all your clothes still fit?"

"If anything, they're tighter around the _waist_." Hawke leans around her, clenching a fist, and yanks the man ten feet into the air before slamming him to the ground again in a clanking metal cacophony. "For as sore as my breasts are, it's not exactly what I was expecting."

"That's normal," Anders calls, offing his blood mage at last with a brilliant flourish of flame-white magic. "Honestly, it might get a little worse before it gets better."

"Would – you," the warrior growls, clambering gracelessly to his feet, "shut – _up?_"

"Rude," Hawke says, frowning, and sets the man's cloth undershirt on fire. "It's not like I know what I'm doing here."

He lets out an enraged, maddened snarl, whirling the greataxe in air-splitting circles between them as sparks jump from his smoldering shirt to his beard; smoke billows from the eyeslits of his helmet and with a roar, he tears it off one-handed. "Stop talking and _fight!_"

And almost before he finishes the sentence, fire and lightning swarm up his legs in a glittering storm and a silver bolt drives square between his eyes.

"Good _shot_, Varric!" Hawke says with a salute to where Varric grins at the top of the stairs, lowering her smoking staff to her side. Anders does the same as he approaches, waving stray flickers of electricity out of the air around him, and slowly, like a particularly dense oak, the man topples backwards to the Lowtown cobbles with a crash.

"I hate every one of you," Aveline mutters, sheathing her longsword, and Hawke drapes one arm over her shoulder.

"We'll get you something ranged one of these days, I promise."

"Oh, shut up."

"Speaking of promises," Anders says, glowing with blue-white healing magic as he brushes his fingers over their various scrapes and bruises, "have you been using that tincture I gave you?"

"Yes, Anders, and it is _foul_. I almost think I'd rather let this little parasite go about exposed to every scrap of sundry magic in this city than keep mixing that poison into my breakfast."

Varric finally reaches them in the center of the square, Bianca slung into place on his back. "You don't mean that."

"Of course not," Hawke sighs, and kneels to rifle through the enormous warrior's pockets. "And it's not like Fenris wouldn't sneak it in there anyway if I tried to quit. Here's another pouch of pebbles, if anyone wants it."

Aveline shakes her head. "Pass, though we should sell that axe. How's Fenris taking you being out here, anyway? You told me he was hovering."

"Better than he was. I think bringing him along on those nice simple spider-murdering trips to the Coast helped him to relax a little."

Anders snorts. "What a relief."

"Oh, stop it." Hawke puts her hands on her knees and pushes to her feet, waving the one half-valuable scrap of paper from the dead man's pockets. "And we've got a hideout location. Who's up for wholesale slaughter?"

"Can it wait until tomorrow?" Varric asks, glancing at the sun. "I'm leading a workshop at the Hanged Man in an hour."

"I suppose I'd prefer that too," Hawke admits, realizing all at once that her back aches, that her knees ache, and that her breasts feel like they're about to fall off her chest. "Everyone else all right with a day's delay?"

Anders nods; Aveline shrugs. "Fine with me."

"All right, then. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh," she adds, snagging Aveline's elbow as Varric and Anders set off towards the Hanged Man, chatting amiably. "Can I ask you something?"

Aveline shoves a bit of blood-caked hair back into her headband. "Of course, Hawke."

"You, um. Offered me something? A few weeks ago. I don't know if you remember. I thought maybe, since our afternoon has opened up, if you weren't too busy…"

"You want me to help you and Fenris pick out baby things?"

"Only if you don't mind!" Hawke blurts, digging one booted toe into the cobblestones. "I'd do it myself if I had the slightest idea of what to get besides the obvious, and you said Donnic practically raised his younger brothers."

"I don't mind at all," Aveline tells her warmly, thumbing the stray bit of hair out of her eyes again. "Just…let me go have a bath, all right?"

"Of course. Fenris and I will meet you at your place in an hour, then, if that works for you."

"It does," Aveline says, and they set off for Hightown, the morning sun winking cheerfully on the enormous greataxe that Hawke drags behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** Schmoop. Schmoop, schmoop, schmoop.

* * *

It is, Hawke thinks, an absolutely _preposterous_ travesty that Fenris has better hair than she. At least when it's clean, she amends to herself, as it is now, the fine white strands sliding smooth as cornsilk over her fingers, flickering gold as gossamer fire here and there as it catches the light from her bedroom hearth. It is not a particularly large fire—too early in the season yet for a true blaze—but just enough to ward away autumn's early chill as she sits cross-legged on the Orlesian rug, leaning against one bedpost, Fenris's bare feet stretched out towards the fire and his head in her lap.

And his unreasonable hair spilling through her hands as she draws them through it in long strokes.

His eyes are almost closed, thin slivers of green flicking across the open book propped against one bent knee. The fingers of one hand splay across the pages to hold them in place, entirely too elegant and slender without his gauntlets for such a mundane task; his other hand has curled around the back of his own neck, his elbow resting comfortably on her knee. Hawke bends over him, runs her fingernails lightly along his scalp. His eyelids flutter and she grins; she does it again in one long line from the nape of his neck to his forehead, the sides of her fingers brushing along the bare tips of his pointed ears to eke out a full shudder, and this time his eyes turn upward to meet her own.

"Something amuses you?" he asks, his voice low and rumbling nicely through the popping logs.

Hawke smoothes the loose white hair away from his forehead, drops a kiss on the three tattooed drops of lyrium bared there. "Don't mind me. Read your book."

He watches her a moment longer, suspicion evident even in his upside-down gaze; then, slowly, he goes back to his book. The corner of Hawke's mouth quirks up as he turns a page—even now, she is too susceptible to the warmth those memories of his reading lessons bring—and as he begins a new chapter Hawke slides her fingertips to the sides of Fenris's neck. He makes no objection, as Hawke expects, and without much direction she begins to draw her fingers up and down the strong lines of his throat, sometimes with her rounded nails, very gently, sometimes with the sides of her fingers. She means it more for the tactile sensation than anything else at first, simply enjoying the pleasure of touching him with neither hesitance nor fear of flight, but as the minutes pass she finds herself more interested in the challenge of eliciting a response—any response.

The lyrium is mostly unaffected by her touch. She knows this, knows too that a harder drag might pull light to the curling lines—but that is not the kind of sensation she intends to bring between them, here, and instead she trespasses their borders only lightly, tracing their edges with the curve of her fingernails.

Then, bold all at once, Hawke draws her thumbs to the backs of Fenris's ears, near the base where they meet his head, and presses.

He stiffens, gaze freezing on the page; Hawke swallows a laugh, presses harder, begins to rub the skin there in slow circles, tiny at first, ever-widening. Fenris does not move, though she can feel the tension thrumming like plucked strings in the lines of his arm, his neck, his shoulders, and when she pulls her thumbs from the back of his ears in one long draw to their very tips, he lets out a shuddering, uneven breath and clenches his eyes shut. The book falls forgotten to one side; the hand behind his neck comes free, fumbles its way around her wrist.

"You," Fenris says roughly, "are driving me to distraction."

"Victory mine," Hawke murmurs, smiling, and when his eyes open again, when his hot, heavy gaze settles on her face, she shakes her head and covers his eyes with both palms.

"What—are you doing?"

"Where's Fenris?" Hawke asks, drawing out the first word light and high. "Where's Fenris?"

He tugs her left hand down, glaring at her with one green eye through the filter of her fingers. "_Hawke_."

"There he is!" Hawke exclaims, clapping her palms to her cheeks. "Fenris, I found you!"

"If you are truly this desperate for _attention_—"

"Who, me? _Never_. I'm just a responsible mother-to-be who's practicing inane games for the sake of her as-yet-unborn child."

"For the sake of your own amusement."

"Well," Hawke says softly, bending to kiss him, "there is that."

After a rather thorough kiss, when she is quite sure she's assuaged any lingering discontentment on Fenris's part, Hawke drops one last peck on his marked forehead and straightens again. Her back aches ever-so-slightly from the pull of cramping muscles; she sends a tiny thread of healing magic up her own spine and sighs, leaning her head back against the carved darkwood bedpost. Fenris keeps hold of her wrist, his thumb stroking along the inside of it where her pulse beats. The fire crackles quietly, faint and irregular and entirely comforting.

"You know," Hawke murmurs, and his eyes flick to hers again—no irritation this time, only attention. "We won't be able to sit like this for much longer."

"Like this?" Fenris repeats, uncomprehending at first; then his gaze moves upward in the direction of her swelling stomach. "Ah. No. For some time, at least."

"Mm." Hawke falls silent again and Fenris does too, the both of them lost in their own thoughts, Hawke's fingers refinding for themselves the soft strands of Fenris's hair.

They sit like this for a long time. Then, at last, Fenris stirs, and without looking at her, he says, "Hawke. Do you know…"

"…Yes?"

"The child."

"Yes. We have one. Or will, anyway."

He purses his lips in irritation, and Hawke tugs at his cheeks until the expression eases. He lets out an explosive breath, glares, and says, "Do you know what the child will be?"

"A half-elf, I'd wager."

"_Hawke._"

She laughs, relenting, and smoothes her fingers along Fenris's cheeks. "No," she tells him more gently. "I've no idea. Probably won't until it's born. Is there…are you hoping for one over the other?"

"Of course not," he says, startled. "Only for health."

"The baby's or mine?"

"Both," Fenris tells her, voice dark and promising, and this time it is he who tugs her down to meet his mouth.

"You know," Hawke says eventually, lips brushing over Fenris's between each word as if that might hide her trepidation, "there's…mm. There's a good chance this child will be…"

She trails off, distracted both by Fenris's kisses and the way his fingers twine through her own, and Fenris laughs against her mouth. "Half-human?"

"No," she sighs, pulling away just enough so that she can meet his eyes, serious now when she does not wish to be. "A mage, Fenris."

His smile dims, then dies. He looks at her, abruptly unreadable; then he sits up and twists to face her in one smooth motion, silhouetted by fire. "Hawke," he says evenly, "why would you say this?"

She spreads her hands, a night-cold chill seeping into the pit of her stomach, Fenris's warmth stripped from her all at once. "It's not impossible. Not even unlikely. I'm a mage and my sister and father were mages, and your sister…" She pulls in a breath, lets it out again. "There's a lot of magic in our bloodlines. Maybe too much."

Fenris watches her without moving, his white hair disarranged by her hands, his green eyes narrow and hard in the dark. He says, "You misunderstand me."

"Do I?"

"You believe I will care less for the child if it has magic."

Hawke lifts one shoulder in a shrug, unable to keep up the pretense of casual indifference. "The thought has crossed my mind, once or twice."

Fenris's eyes slide closed, pinching tight at the corners as if she has hurt him; then with only the rustle of cloth and skin against the Orlesian carpet he has pulled her entirely into his arms, her back to his chest, his knees bent alongside her own beside the low-burning fire. His fingers draw her dark hair over one shoulder and she shivers, shivers again when his mouth presses against the nape of her neck. He murmurs something in Arcanum that she can't understand, then says, "Hawke. I know the child might be a mage. I know there is power and your blood and mine, and I know that such strength is not easily controlled. I _know _what the child might be."

He pauses, rests his forehead against her hair. She cannot speak. He murmurs, "I might…wish the child had no magic. For its own sake. This world is not gentle with mages."

Hawke huffs a laugh, turning enough that she can take one of his hands in her own. Fenris lets her take it, lets her rest it against her stomach; his other hand joins them, holding Hawke steady, resting palms flat over the place where their child grows. "Hawke," Fenris says, his voice low and calm and wholly certain, "mage or no mage, I would slaughter any living soul that tried to take this child from us."

She swallows hard, twice, utterly unable to dislodge the lump of emotion from her throat, and clutches almost convulsively at his hands. "No good," she gasps, half-laughing through the sudden hot tears. "We fight too many corpses."

He laughs into her neck, again at her noise of protest when he stands and lifts her in his arms. A branch breaks in the hearth and her sigh is lost to the sudden burst of sparks; Fenris lowers her to the bed beneath him and her whisper is lost to the skin of his throat. But Hawke doesn't mind, not really—her hands say enough for her here—and if in the end Fenris's own hands are too tender on her for once, and his mouth covers hers too gently…

Well. She doesn't mind that either.

—

None of her pants fit. _None _of them, not one single pair of trousers. Hawke knows; Hawke's tried, the dozen pairs she owns scattered haphazardly around her room, she herself standing in the center of the maelstrom in only a loose shirt with her hands on her hips, too near tears to speak.

Damn the world, she decides eventually, and crawls back into bed without a second thought.

(Later, Isabela brings her six pairs of pants with adjustable leather-laced waists. Hawke doesn't ask where they came from, too grateful to color the gift with shades of shabby Darktown crate. She doesn't even comment on the fact that two of them are torn right across the arse, even if Isabela keeps making innuendos about ventilation.)

—

"Anders, I'm not joking."

"Neither am I."

"I _pissed _myself laughing! It wasn't even that funny!"

Anders throws her a dry look from where he mixes her newest batch of delicious, dust-flavored nutritional potion. "It _happens_, Hawke. Bring extra smalls with you if you're that concerned about it."

"At least I don't have to worry about needing them here," she grumbles, scowling half-heartedly at the beige brew brimming between Anders's hands. "Hard to find something to laugh about when you're being prodded with little ice-cold bits of metal."

"So this is what gratitude sounds like! I've always wondered."

"Oh, hush," she says, accepting with both hands the bottle Anders brings her, and she looks up to meet his smile. "Thank you, Anders."

"You're welcome. I added an extra pinch of angry resentment in there, just for you."

"You certainly know how to treat a girl." Hawke slides gingerly from the table, twenty weeks' worth of growing child somewhat impinging upon her ability to spring lightly—goat-like, really—from one level to another. She puts one hand on her stomach, trying to ignore the sudden, surprisingly-consuming desire for a fresh loaf of bread. "Was everything all right?"

"As usual. Come back next week around the same time, and I bet I'll have almost exactly the same thing to say." Anders leans back against his worktable, shrugging. "Congratulations. You're healthy as a horse."

"Ferelden doesn't even _have _horses," Hawke points out, and plucks her staff from the wall where it leans. "But I appreciate the thought."

"Oh—" Anders says, startled, and she glances back over her shoulder to see him staring into nothing, his brow furrowed, his lips working without sound. Hawke waits patiently, takes a small sip from the fresh potion. Grimaces. After several minutes, there's a drag of power like the tide receding, and Anders gives the room a few blind blinks before his eyes come into focus on her face again. "Hawke?"

"Just making sure Justice didn't stay too long," she offers, lifting the glinting vial to him in salute.

"Oh. No. He was expressing his concern about…" He trails off, abruptly consumed with the weak Darktown sunlight filtering through the empty glass bottles at his elbow.

"About…?" Hawke prompts.

With a heavy sigh, Anders looks at her, his feathered shoulders hunched up around his ears. "Justice is concerned that should anything happen to you—Maker forbid, naturally—that the baby's potential magical talents might end up…ignored. Or misused."

"Anders, this baby is not going to be spearheading any mage-right revolutions until it's at _least _ten years old. Twelve, if its father has any say."

"You asked; I told you. Justice just wants to be sure it'll be taken care of not only regarding its health, but its magic, too. Whether or not it has any."

"Are you saying—" Hawke blinks. "Anders. Are you saying that Justice wants to be the child's magical godfather?"

Anders opens his mouth. Then he closes it again, cocking his head as if listening to a voice she can't hear; at last, he says, rather uncertainly, "Yes?"

"Well," Hawke says after a moment. "All right then."

"He says—thank you? And that this is a just decision. And—congratulations."

"Thanks, Justice," Hawke says, clutching the bottle to her heart, and when Anders waves one hand to shoo her away she turns tail and flees, desperately swallowing back the laughter bubbling up her throat.

She makes it all of three minutes away from the clinic before something jolts beneath her breasts. The gasp that slithers out of her is entirely involuntary, as is the hand flying to press to her rounded stomach; she half-turns, ready to throw back in Anders's face all his fine words about _healthy_ when—it comes again, rougher this time.

"Oh, flames," Hawke breathes, staring down. "Are you—_kicking_?"

As if in answer, a hard little heel nudges her ribs, then drags itself along the center of her stomach to her navel. Hawke presses a palm to it in answer, too stupefied to do much else. Then realization sinks in and she presses harder, a shocked laugh bursting free to hang lightly in the Darktown street. "Your father is going to _kill _me. Stop it. Right now. Don't you move another muscle until we get home and I can—"

"Home?" says a new voice, a man's voice, deep, thick with both threat and laughter. "And where would that be?"

Hawke looks up, smile wiped away by the more comfortable impassive mask of battle. An enormous, heavy, bearded man with a pair of daggers in his belt detaches himself from a wall's dim shadow, approaching her with a smile and forearms the size of ham hocks. He stops two, maybe three steps away, and even as Hawke straightens four more long shapes uncoil themselves from the wall, from behind a pillar, from the space between two barrels. "Somewhere you're not," Hawke answers him, voice even, and lets her hands fall to her sides, swinging just enough to touch the steady, cool weight of her staff where it hangs from her shoulders.

"That's a shame," the man says, affecting a pout. "You've gone and hurt my feelings."

"At least you've got more than one. That's a nuance that escapes most of the people who try to rob me."

One of the man's minions lets out a sharp bark of laughter, and the glare he shoots at the woman is poisonous enough to curdle even Anders's potion in Hawke's belt. His head swivels back to her like a boulder grinding over a mountain. "That's a dangerous crime, slander. Maybe you should watch your tongue."

"Maybe you should go back to your shadowy lurking and let me pass. That was good. That was working for you."

The man's lips curl like a pair of salmon twisting in the bottom of a net as he takes one step towards her—

—and Hawke bursts into flame.

The fire roars around her, gold tongues licking up her planted feet, flame blazing in great whirling arcs from her shoulders, her hands, her staff when she pulls it free to stand before her, stretching up towards Lowtown's underbelly as if craving to feed from it. The minions fall back together, the towering pyre Hawke has made of herself throwing weird shadows across their fear-pale faces, and even the gigantic leader flinches back, hands raised.

"Listen," he says, his voice smaller, his beard smoking from where her sparks have singed it. "Listen. We don't want trouble. We don't want—I don't want—"

"You don't," Hawke says, low and dangerous, "want _what_?"

"Nothing! Nothing!"

"Oh, good. Because you have already destroyed the excitement of a rather pivotal moment of this pregnancy—my _first _pregnancy—" Hawke adds with a rather impressive blast of heat and flame, and the woman who'd laughed earlier throws out a tiny _congratulations!_ before cowering back again, "—thank you—and it seems to _me _that selecting as your mark not only a moody, pregnant apostate but the thrice-damned Champion of _Kirkwall—_" she gestures to herself helpfully, "—shows not only an enormous dearth of even the most _minimal _intelligence but also a stark raving _lunacy _that would, honestly, make any _possible_ punishment I could dream up nowhere near as utterly _cruel_ as _your very continued_ _existence!_"

Hawke breaks off, panting. The fire that still surges around her spits a bit, like oil sputtering, and she realizes her boots have begun to crack beneath the heat. Still, she doesn't move, glaring at the leader; his face has gone wholly white in the firelight, and even from here she can see the little gold embers smoldering cheerfully in his beard.

She says, "Now. Get out of my way."

He staggers back, trips on a green-glass bottle, plants one beefy hand on an empty crate that gives way with a cracking sigh. Hawke doesn't even look as he sprawls to the ground with a shout, doesn't deign even to glance at the man's minions as they scurry to his aid. Only once does she look back, pausing at the top of the long stairway leading to Lowtown as the last of the fire dies around her; she has left little charred footprints up each wooden step, the group of thugs still staring up at her from the bottom of them like survivors of some particularly unpredictable storm.

Hawke lifts her chin, throws one last disdainful look in their direction—and the moment she is out of their sight, she slings her staff on her back and runs.

—

"Why do women _do_ this to themselves?"

Her voice is soft, echoing in the enormous empty darkness of Fenris's main hall; above her, in one of the open squares set into the ceiling, a half-dozen stars utterly ignore her question. Hawke sighs, adjusting herself more comfortably where she lies on the flat wooden bench at the base of Fenris's grand staircase, and lifts her other leg to join the first where it is propped above her on the wall. "I mean, really," she continues, blinking up at the stars, "we don't sleep—or if we do, the kicking wakes us up. We don't get to eat anything we want. We get really _odd _dreams. Body parts grow and swell that _definitely _shouldn't, that I can't even _see _half the time—" she glares at her crossed ankles, "—and then on top of everything we get the right honorable distinction of pushing out a thing that exists only to shit and cry."

The stars twinkle obligingly—and silently—and Hawke throws an arm over her eyes.

Eventually, the silence is broken by a distant rustle. Hawke lifts her arm, looking upward, and hears Fenris's voice murmur something; then a match strikes crisply and the burning yellow glow of a candle spreads across the ceiling above her, and Fenris calls with more urgency, "Hawke?"

"Down here," she calls without moving, and a moment later, his hair tousled with sleep and eyes lined with worry, Fenris bends over the railing above her.

He stares, sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. "What—are you doing?"

"I had to go to the privy," she tells him comfortably. "I was on my way back but my back was _aching,_ and this seemed as flat a place as any. And then my ankles hurt."

A corner of his mouth turns up unwillingly, and with another sigh he pushes away from the railing and starts down the stairs. "I should have expected this."

"Wait. See if there's any loaves of bread left over from dinner. I'm starving."

"For bread?" Fenris says, voice dry, though he disappears briefly into an adjoining room without complaint and emerges a moment later with a fat round loaf of sweetbread in one hand.

"Give," Hawke says, stretching out her arms like an infant, and Fenris tears off a small chunk from one corner for himself before depositing it in her hands.

"Lean forward," he advises her, and holding the bread in his teeth, he uses both hands to lever her shoulders upwards; then he seats himself on the bench and lowers her again so that her head rests on his thigh. "Better?"

"Yes," Hawke says between swallows, and studies him from the vantage point of her new pillow. His eyes are bloodshot, heavy-lidded with tiredness as he leans his head back against the wall behind the bench; even as she watches he stifles a yawn with the heel of his hand, then rubs his palm against his cheek where faint indentations of his pillow still linger. "You know," Hawke murmurs, "you don't have to sit up with me."

He looks down at her, lifts a pointed eyebrow. "I am where I wish to be, Hawke."

"All right, all right." She lifts the hand that doesn't hold the bread in appeasement, flicking a bit of white hair from the corner of his eye. "Have you thought of a name you like yet?"

"No."

"Me either."

He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, his voice dipping down again into the roughness of sleep. "There is still time."

"All of three months." She takes another large mouthful of sweetbread. "I like Creighton, for a boy."

Fenris doesn't even flinch. "You do not."

"Nigel."

"He would be beaten by other children."

"We could always go with Anders," Hawke offers, and when Fenris only snorts she reaches up and flicks the underside of his jaw. "I know how important this name is to you. There must be something you like."

His eyes open then, though he does not quite meet her gaze. He says, slowly, "I heard a name. For a girl."

"Tell me."

"Leda."

Hawke closes her eyes, turning the word over in her mind, examining it for soundness, for teasing nicknames, for the way it might sound in her own voice after misbehavior. When she looks up at last Fenris is already watching her, his eyes narrowed in both uncertainty and a faint sheen of embarrassment. She smiles, touches his arm. "I like it."

The tense lines of his jaw give way to something softer, and after a moment he bends to kiss her briefly. "I am glad," he says against her mouth, "Hawke."

"Me too," she murmurs, and settles back on his leg as he leans back against the wall, and for several minutes Hawke permits herself to do absolutely nothing but watch the stars in their little square of clear night-dark sky. Fenris's leg is warm and solid beneath her head, his hand gentle as his thumb strokes aimlessly over her shoulder; his throat moves as he swallows the last of his bread, the lyrium that bars his neck glinting in the faint traces of starlight, and when he closes his eyes at last it is in something that looks very much like peace.

And abruptly, Hawke wants to cry.

She is having a baby. She is having Fenris's child, a terribly fragile little person growing underneath her heart, and Fenris has not run, has not _fled_—he has stayed here with her, with her child, and will stay for the foreseeable future—and in this moment Hawke wants nothing more and nothing less than a _lifetime_ like this, her head on Fenris's knee, his arm around her shoulders, the two halves of her heart as near each other as she can make them. She blinks back her tears, forces the aching lump in her throat to move again.

Without preamble, she says, "Would you marry me?"

Fenris stiffens from head to toe, staring blankly at the starry sky; then he looks down at her, as utterly bewildered as she has ever seen him. "What?"

"Not now, obviously." Hawke lifts a shoulder in as much a shrug as she can make in this position, tears off another small piece of bread from the diminishing loaf. "Just—you know. Are you willing to? Eventually. Marry me."

"Willing," he repeats softly. He blinks once, twice; then all at once his eyes draw into focus on her face, intent and _intense_ and hot enough her skin begins to warm, and his voice drops into something low and fierce as he says, "Hawke, _yes_."

"Oh, good," she whispers, and the first tears begin to track down her cheeks.

Fenris wipes them away with his thumb, carefully, and before she can speak again he drags her against him until she is half-sitting sideways in his lap, what is left of the loaf thumping forgotten to the ground as his arms come around her, her legs dangling over his knee. "Hawke," he says again, his mouth brushing over her temple, his voice unsteady with emotion, "I am yours."

She clenches her eyes shut against the tears, lets out a wobbling little laugh. "If I'd known it was that easy, I would have asked you months ago."

"Hawke—I didn't—I had not thought—"

"_Don't_," Hawke says, and turns her head to kiss him. "I love you. That's…that's enough, isn't it?"

His grip is too tight on her arms. She doesn't care, not with his eyes burning like this into hers, not with the lyrium-light darting like silverfish down his throat, his arms. He curls the fingers of one hand beneath her chin, tips up her face. He says, "Yes."

Some time after that, once Fenris has helped her back to his room and made his affections quite clear, Hawke pillows her head on his naked shoulder and hums. "I bet Isabela would do it."

"Hmm?" Fenris asks, his eyes already closed.

"Officiate the marriage. She's a ship's captain."

Fenris is quiet a long time, long enough that Hawke thinks he's fallen asleep. She is just on the verge of it herself when he rolls towards her with a sigh, his free arm coming up and over her not-inconsiderable stomach. He says, softly, "I would like that."

Hawke smiles, and murmurs, "Merrill suggested the name Maferath. Said it sounded like wind." Fenris snorts, and kisses her shoulder, and soon after that they are both asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: **A little bit of language and...uh. Heavy petting? Do people still say that? And I completely forgot to mention it last chapter, but Merrill's Maferath joke is entirely Jade's. Sorry, Jadeykins. Thanks for not hunting me down for the oversight.

* * *

"Oh, shit. Oh, _shit—_"

"Move, Hawke!" Isabela snaps, and Hawke flings herself against the back of a boulder as a throwing spear the thickness of her _entire arm_ whistles through the place where she was standing, the heavy hollow _thunk _it makes as it drives two-thirds its length again into the sand reverberating off the high stone walls that surround them.

Hawke curses again, gasping as she edges a glance around her makeshift shelter. Tal-Vashoth—_Tal_-_Vashoth_, on what she'd meant to be a perfectly quiet last patrol! It'd been so calm on the Coast lately she hadn't thought twice about walking her customary route one final time; Anders had hinted she was growing too large to maneuver easily—that she was quite aware of, she'd told him—but he'd also warned her against putting either the baby or herself through undue stress. She's not entirely sure, but she _thinks_, ducking another enormous spear whirring within a hairsbreadth of her face, that this counts as stress.

"How many left?" she shouts, shoving hair from her eyes, and Sebastian's head pops up from a high fall of rocks.

"Seven!" he calls, nocking an arrow even as he does so; the string twangs, and Hawke hears a wet thud as satisfaction flickers across Sebastian's face. "Six!"

She doesn't want to fight six Tal-Vashoth. She doesn't want to fight _any_, actually, and when her arm twinges she clamps her free hand around the deep, bleeding gash left by their vanguard's first spear. "Okay," she breathes to herself, gripping her staff like the wood and metal might fly away without her holding it in place. "Okay. Isabela?"

A glass flask shatters prettily on the boulder beside her head, and a moment later Isabela bounds up through a thick grey cloud of smoke. "You called?"

"Ready if you are."

"Sweet thing, I'm _always _ready."

Wincing, Hawke pushes away from the boulder. When the next wave of spears soars over their heads Hawke throws a quick nod at Isabela and darts—for varying definitions of the word—forward out of the boulder's shadow, skirting the arrow-pierced body of Sebastian's Number Seven until she is nearly upon the handful of spear-throwers clustered at the top of the hill. She doesn't wait for them to react—instead her staff swings forward in a violent flashing arc before her feet, magic blasting from the end of it, and before they can do more than stagger backwards Hawke yanks a wall of bare glittering ice from the sand.

"Now!" she cries, but Isabela is already there, daggers flickering like needles in the noon sun as she pierces the ice here, there, angling for the throats and hearts and foreheads that hang suspended in Hawke's frozen prison. One shatters entirely, a rain of ice and frozen flesh spilling down the sandy hill towards Hawke in a way that would turn her stomach if she weren't already so intimately familiar with nausea. She eases backwards down the hill, one hand beneath her belly as she counts the bodies Isabela leaves behind. Four—five if she counts the shattered one, which she does—five and—where is—

There is an abrupt, scalding breath on the back of her neck.

Hawke turns slowly, already knowing what she'll see. And of course _there_ is the last Tal-Vashoth, towering over her with his strange red-painted chest markings indistinguishable from the blood smeared across them, his horned head bent towards her, a truly impressive throwing spear held heavily in one hand.

"Oh," says Hawke.

He lifts the spear. Hawke's staff comes up automatically as a voice shouts behind her, but she knows as well as Isabela that there is very little to be done here—his massive arm jerks back, fast as lightning—

_Fenris, I'm so sorry—_

And an armchair-sized block of stone comes barreling out of nowhere to slam into the Tal-Vashoth's side, hurtling him like a drunken anvil into the stone side of the mountain. Hawke scurries back up the hill on her hands and knees, pride entirely forsaken for the sake of remaining unskewered, and as Isabela drags her to her feet she looks down to see Merrill waving up at her cheerfully.

"Sorry, Hawke!" she cries. "I didn't get you, did I?"

"Only in the best way!" Hawke shouts back, and Sebastian's bowstring twangs again, as beautiful as a Chantry bell if she's ever heard one. There's a short, sharp cry beneath the rubble; then, at last, save the crashing waves beneath them, the bluff-side falls silent.

Hawke bends, her knees splaying wide as she grips them around her increased bulk, and blows out a short breath as she does her best to ignore the indignant little elbow trying to work its way through her kidney. Isabela claps her on the back. "You know, you don't move too badly for someone swinging a sandbag around their gut."

"That is _exactly _what it feels like," Hawke mutters, putting both hands to the small of her back as she straightens and sending a flare of cool healing magic to her wounded arm. "Flames, that was close."

"You've had closer calls," Isabela points out as they begin to make their way down to Merrill and Sebastian.

Hawke shakes her head. "Not like this. Not with the risk this high."

"People always get so squeamish around infants. Give me a bottle of rum and a tiller and I'll show you how I handle _my _baby."

"I'd love to," Hawke says, windmilling her arms as she slides the last few feet to the bottom of the hill. Sebastian steadies her and she grips his arm gratefully; then she looks over her shoulder and says, "By the way, you can officiate marriages, right? Legally?"

"Of course! I love presiding. Of course, they're usually at sea and with desperate, sweaty men, but—" Isabela stops midword, hand still outstretched to the outcropped stone at her shoulder; slowly, her fingers close around it as her eyes lift to Hawke's. "Why?"

"No reason," Hawke says, linking arms with Merrill as she turns back to the city, and it is only Sebastian's broad back that keeps Isabela from tackling her to the ground.

—

"I hear nothing," Fenris says at last, pulling away from her bare stomach.

"To be honest," Hawke admits, "I was kind of hoping you'd just get kicked in the ear."

—

"You know," says Hawke into the silence, her words muffled on account of her face being mashed into the table between the little trays of cheeses, "if you'd told me a month ago I'd have preferred being out on the coast fighting Tal-Vashoth, I'd have called you a liar."

"Mistress," Orana says reprovingly, emptying one etched-silver tray of cheese slices onto the other, like it _matters_.

"A nice liar! A very sweet bearer of false witness."

"You don't have to see them all."

Hawke levers her forehead away from the ridiculously impractical tiny round table, leaning back in her armchair as she pinches the bridge of her nose. "I wouldn't," she tells the ceiling of her rarely-used sitting room, "if there weren't one genuinely caring woman for every eight gossip-mongering biddies."

"Then think of those instead. Lady Elegant brought you that wonderful collection of poultices to help after the birth."

"And Lady Rolin brought a hand-woven—hand-woven!—tapestry of her daughter in labor. I don't know if it's meant to be inspiration or deterrent."

Orana winces. "Perhaps something can be made of it?"

"Yes. A shawl. And when I wear it I will turn into a shrieking harpy to warn Fenris that I am not in the mood for his canny humor."

"Not precisely what I had in mind," Orana says primly, "but whatever the mistress wishes."

"Don't be tolerant."

"As you wish."

"Orana," Hawke says, and bursts into helpless laughter. Orana smiles again and pats her shoulder, and just as Hawke thinks they might have flattered Fortune enough to earn a quiet afternoon, the bell at the front door sounds an energetic little jingle of catastrophe.

"Mistress," Orana begins carefully, but Hawke is already waving her on.

"I know, I know. Go let her in."

Orana goes, and Hawke sets to the unwelcome and unwieldy task of extracting herself from the plush armchair. It takes two heaves and a hefty shove—barely avoiding an upset of the precious cheeses—but by the time Orana returns with the newest noblewoman in tow she is upright, one hand beneath her ludicrous stomach, demure as she knows how to be in a man's shirt and loose-waisted trousers and no shoes set against her guest's fine yellow-and-red silk. "Lady Busson. I'm so glad to see you."

"No, you're not," Lady Busson says, the white hair loosely piled atop her head still barely reaching Hawke's shoulder. Without waiting for an invitation, she settles into the armchair on the other side of the daintily-carved round table. "You're tired and you should go lie down. But I came by anyway."

"Well, that's…kind of you," Hawke says uncertainly, sinking back into the chair with much less effort than she'd had to muster to leave it. Until now her conversations with Lady Busson had been limited to a few pointed interactions at public galas; her first impression had been of a short, round, elderly woman with no tolerance for nonsense and a sharp—if honest—tongue, and so far she has seen little to reverse that opinion.

"It isn't kind at all. It's blatant curiosity, and now that you're home from the wars for a little while I'm taking the opportunity to indulge it."

"Thank you for the warning, then," Hawke says evenly, and lifts the little silver platter at her elbow. "Cheese?"

"No, I don't want any cheese. I want to know who the father of that child is."

Hawke stiffens, astonishment and something of affront snapping lightning-sharp up her spine. "Excuse me?"

"Don't be dense, girl. Everyone knows you're expecting; it's all the world's talked about for months. Why do you think so many of them are showing up here unannounced?"

"Not genuine concern for my well-being? I'm wounded."

"Don't be flippant. They're eating their own tongues to figure out who the father is. The rumor's going around that it's that tall, dark elf that's always in and out of here with a face like thunder, but the idiots who trade on this sort of thing can't seem to decide what to believe about it. Half of them want you in some sort of sordid fling with the hired muscle; the other half can't stop swooning about true love." Lady Busson lifts her teacup from its saucer with a fine, knobbed hand and sips delicately from its edge. "I think the whole lot of 'em are fools."

"That certainly excuses your candor," Hawke snaps, too rattled for good taste. If this were Isabela she would understand this directness—but this is an elderly noblewoman she has spoken to maybe three times in her life, and she has been trapped in this room with too many selfish, gossiping, nosy women over the last week. Here, in her own house, Hawke refuses to let one more of them trample over both her pride and Fenris's privacy in the supposed name of neighborly interest. "You've won my heart. All my secrets are yours."

Brown eyes turn to her, sharp and too clear for this woman's age; then she sets her cup on its saucer and the saucer on the table and folds her dark fingers in her lap. "Apologies," she says without preamble. "I forgot you weren't one of the feathery mincing ninnies I've watched grow up here over the last sixty years. They were raised by ninnies, of course, so they have some excuse, but you were raised by your mother and Leandra always had brains." She snorts. "Romantic streak a mile wide, but the girl could think."

"You—knew my mother?"

"Isn't that what I just said? Knew your mother when she was a child; knew your uncle, too, and what a sad copper he's turned out to be, eh?"

"Gamlen isn't that bad," says Hawke, hardly knowing what she means, hardly comprehending how this conversation has so shifted under her feet. "He's got his own daughter, you know."

"Does he? More luck to him. He needs it." Lady Busson leans forward, age-softened elbows coming to rest on her knees. "I didn't mean that about your elf. I haven't paid mind to the tongue-waggers here since I married, but it seems they've taught me a few things without my realizing."

"Fenris is his own man," Hawke mutters, jamming an embroidered pillow behind her back. "He makes his own choices."

Lady Busson sucks in a breath through her teeth. "He's not playing blackguard, is he?"

Hawke blinks, startled. "What? No! Of course not!"

"Good. Had me worried, there. Heard you two were getting married after the baby's born. Didn't want to have to suddenly start distrusting some of my most reliable sources."

"I'm so pleased to know we haven't disappointed you." Hawke rubs her fingers over the base of her skull, struggling to waylay the headache forming there. "You know, most of the other ladies kind enough to visit did at least _try _for subtlety in their inquiries about my private life."

"Did it work?"

"Oddly enough, it didn't." A corner of Hawke's mouth quirks up unwillingly. "But considering they seemed just as offended by my lover as my manners, I suppose I wasn't inclined to generosity."

"Lady Rolin didn't approve much, did she?"

"Oh, she danced around the subject for ages. Very elegant, very circuitous. And then at last she asked what my mother would think of me running around unwed and pregnant—and by an elf, no less—and I told her that considering my mother had run off to Ferelden with a penniless apostate, I rather thought she'd be touched I took after her."

Lady Busson snorts again and makes a rude gesture in the rough direction of Lady Rolin's manse. "Nitwit. I'd say she means well, but she doesn't. Wish I could've been there when Leandra gave her a piece of her mind after you first took up with that elf."

Hawke blinks, unbalanced. "When I—what?"

Lady Busson looks at her, hard, then leans forward in her chair. Her slippered feet barely touch the ground. "Happened several years ago. Lady Rolin saw you and your elf necking outside your estate. Came over to warn your mother the next day about you running wild now that you'd got a taste of real money. Wasn't there myself, which is a pity, but the way I heard it Leandra took the teacup and the scone right out of her hand and threw her out on the stoop." Lady Busson smiles, something in her eyes rather warm. "Told her she was perfectly happy with how you'd turned out and the choices you were making, and she'd be pleased as punch if Lady Rolin'd keep her beaky nose out of your romances."

"My mother," Hawke starts, but she is unable to hold Lady Busson's gaze and looks down instead at her hands twisted in her lap. Her heart is hot and floating and aching all at once. "She did not use the word 'beaky.'"

"Eh, probably not. Had the right idea, though. Not their business anyway."

She laughs despite herself. "Oh, and it's yours?"

"Of course not," Lady Busson says, surprised. "I told you it was curiosity."

Hawke props her elbow on the cushioned armrest, drops her chin into the palm of her hand. "At least you're frank about it. It's when they pretend I'm _not _throwing oil on the sputtering flames of their rumors I start to get cross. But I won't lie, Lady Busson; the pointed questions _are _a little off-putting at first."

"Of course," Lady Busson says, waving a hand in dismissal. "I wouldn't want to talk to me either. I'm very rude. But let me give you this before you go upstairs and rest. I can see even from here you're tiring out."

"Please, you really don't need to—"

"You'll take it and you'll like it," Lady Busson tells her severely, and pulls from a little leather satchel at her feet a thick, well-worn book. The cover has been dyed deep blue, heavy silver filigree winding up each side and down the binding, and as her dark brown hands shift on the cover Hawke can see that the loop-work title is Orlesian.

"I'm sorry," she says, taking the book despite herself. It is heavy and the corners have been worn from years of reading, and for a moment she can almost see Lady Busson as she was, younger, some quiet grandchild on her ample lap. "I don't read Orlesian very well."

"It's a translation," Lady Busson says crisply, and as Hawke flips through the book she can see that not only has the book indeed been written in the trade tongue, but lovely, colored print-block pictures have been set across each chapter's title page. "It's a book of fairy tales. Orlesian stories from the older generations, before we started giving all our children happy endings to make them soft."

Hawke touches an image of a tall, sad woman standing at the bottom of a deep earthen shaft. "This is beautiful. I have a book from Ferelden that's similar but I've never even _heard _of some of these—Lady Busson, I can't take this from your family."

"Twaddle. Your mother's mother gave that book to me as a child when my parents brought me here. Meant to give it to your mother when you lot came back to the city, but I never made the time. Then she was gone. Now it's time it went back to your family."

"I—" Hawke starts, but she can think of absolutely nothing to say, even when Lady Busson pushes up from her chair.

"Anyway, it's yours now. Get your elf to do the characters; he's got the voice for 'em."

"Of course," Hawke says numbly, then lets out a sudden laugh. "Ridiculous. I can't imagine him doing that."

Lady Busson smiles at her, their eyes almost level like this. "I think you'd be surprised what fatherhood can do to a man. Don't get up. I know my way to the door."

"I know that, but—Orana—"

"Have a nice nap," Lady Busson says, and then without looking back she disappears into the hallway, and a moment later Hawke hears the front door shut sharply behind her.

Orana comes bustling in a few seconds later, pausing at the empty chair. "She's gone, Mistress?"

"Like a hurricane," Hawke says, shaking her head, staring down at the thick book still perched on the edge of her knees. "What do you think?" she asks her stomach softly, touching the worn edges of the cover as Orana begins to straighten the arrayed infant gifts on the other side of the sitting room. "Can you get your father to talk in silly voices for your own amusement?"

As if in response, the child's foot nudges against her ribs, and Hawke smiles.

Anything's possible, she supposes.

—

Hawke can't remember the last time she heard Bodahn so excited. "_Messere_!" he shouts again, and she thinks it's a good thing she was halfway down the stairs from the library already, because this sounds rather urgent. She pulls the heavy scarlet blanket she'd been wrapped in closer around her shoulders and increases her waddling speed as best she can; at eight months her ability to hurry has drastically diminished, but she does her best as she gains the study floor and makes her way towards the foyer.

"Bodahn?" she calls. "I'm in here—I'm coming—what's wrong?"

The study door flies open.

Her eyes are trained low, expecting a dwarf; instead she sees tall metal boots, strong thighs and heavy armor, a blue tabard held in place by a sturdy leather belt. Her gaze lifts, slowly, drunkenly, across a broad chest (broader than she remembers), broader shoulders (the size of a barn, like he's always been), blue eyes so like hers in a face made leaner by hard living and harder grief—and the most ridiculous, idiotic little scruff of a scraggly beard clinging to the skin beneath his lower lip.

"_Carver_," Hawke says, her eyes watering even as she grins, "what the _Void _have you done to your face?"

"Good to see you too, sister," he says, smirking broadly, and makes it all of three steps into the room before Hawke spreads her arms wide for an embrace and the blanket drops away from her shoulders.

Carver stops. Looks hard at her stomach. Blinks. Looks again.

"Carver?" comes a new, surprised voice from the doorway, and before Hawke can say a word, Carver swivels on his heel and, with all the easy strength of a farmboy turned sword-wielding soldier, he levels Fenris with one solid punch to the mouth.

—

"What are you even doing here?" Hawke asks later that evening, once explanations have been distributed and Carver has shed his armor and Fenris has declined her healing magic, caught sight of his rapidly-swelling cheek in a glass, and grudgingly decided to accept it. "I thought the Wardens were supposed to be moving south."

"We were." Carver shrugs, shifting sideways on the study's sofa so that there is room for her equally-broad figure beside him. "Then a bad snowstorm hit and cut off the roads, and I asked for a leave since we weren't going anywhere anyway. Although," he adds darkly, gesturing at her stomach, "I wasn't expecting _this._"

"What, nervous about being an uncle? I hear the first one's the hardest."

"Maker, don't joke about that yet."

Hawke shakes her head, relenting. "Didn't you get _any _of my letters?"

"None of the important ones, it seems." He glances at her enormous stomach again, then rolls his head back on his shoulders to glare through the walls at her room where Fenris is cleaning up. "I might be a Warden, but I can still take him behind the woodshed if you want."

"I appreciate the thought, but no beatings are required at the moment. Ask me again when I'm in labor, I might give a different answer."

Carver stares at her for a long second, then shudders head to toe. "Another mental image burned into my brain forever. Thank you so much, sister."

"Aren't homecomings the best?" Hawke laughs, adjusting herself against the pillows, and tries to remember the last time she sat like this with her brother: easy, content, no death and little sorrow between them. "I'm glad you're here, anyway. How long will you be staying?"

"Two weeks," he says, then looks suddenly nervous. "If you'll have me."

"Of course," Hawke says, smacking his arm; the baby shifts at that exact moment, a fisted hand pressing just behind her navel, and Hawke swallows down a little gasp at the sensation.

"What's wrong? Are you all right?"

"Yes," she says shortly—and holds out her hand, palm-up. After a brief hesitation Carver puts his hand in hers (another familiarity shocking in its strangeness, she thinks), and she guides it to rest on the swell of her stomach where the child pushes. "Can you feel that?"

"I can feel—" he starts, his brow furrowed in concentration; then he yanks his hand back as comprehension dawns and shakes it out in midair. "That is so—_gah_!"

She lifts an eyebrow. "Choose your words carefully, dear brother."

He flings his hands out, groping for words. "You have a little—person inside you! Growing inside you! My sister! Isn't that—_odd_?"

"You and I once fought a giant monster made out of reanimated magical rocks almost ten miles under the surface of the world, and you think this is odd."

"Oh, shut up," Carver grumbles. He swallows, glances at her for permission, and tentatively replaces his palm on her rounded stomach. The baby's fist is still there; at his touch it moves sideways, dragging down towards her waist, and Carver follows the motion with something near wonder in his face.

"Goodness, Carver," Hawke murmurs, watching his fingers move over her house-robe. "Your hands are ridiculous. They're like dinner platters with sausages coming off them."

"Only because Fenris has such dainty little fingers," he retorts, though he doesn't raise his voice as he pulls his hand away at last. "I could snap them like sticks."

"I wouldn't recommend it," comes a dry voice from the doorway, and Hawke looks up to see Fenris entering the study at last, scrubbing at his still-damp hair with a white towel. His cheek is almost entirely healed save the barest traces of a bruise, and Hawke reminds herself to touch it up a little more thoroughly before bed.

"Only because my sister likes you," Carver says flatly, and rolls his eyes as Fenris takes a seat in one of the leather chairs closer to the fire. "Though that isn't always the best endorsement."

"Thanks a lot," Hawke grumbles.

"I learned from the best."

She purses her lips. "And now you're using it on her."

Carver thumps her on the forehead with a finger, grinning. "The letters just aren't the same, are they?"

"They never are," Hawke agrees, and sighs as his arm comes behind her head.

They sit in companionable silence for several minutes before Carver stirs at last. "So, is everything…ready here?"

"As much as it can be," Hawke murmurs, and Fenris nods. "We're…all the baby things are in Mother's old room. The, ah. The cradle, all of that. It—seemed a better thing to do with it than letting it stay a mausoleum."

Eventually, Carver's sudden stiffness begins to relax against her. "I see," he says slowly. "That's…a good thing, I think."

There's a doll in there too, soft and small and smiling, purchased with a portion of the coin Fenris won from her once in a night of Wicked Grace. He had presented it to her awkwardly, embarrassed and determined all at once, though he had seemed to understand the sudden tears and clutching of the doll to her heart had been less from grief and more to his choice being _perfect. _She says at last, "I thought so."

"And what about the two of you? Ready to be mummy and daddy?"

"Of course not," Hawke says, laughing, even as Fenris says, "Yes."

Her laughter dies away. Hawke looks at Fenris across the room as he pulls the towel free of his hair; one black eyebrow lifts in challenge, the corner of his mouth curving into a faint smirk, and Hawke lets out a sudden, startled breath. "Maybe more ready than I thought," she says softly, and Carver snorts.

"And I have two weeks of this to look forward to. Wonderful."

Hawke rolls her eyes. "If it's going to bother you, go visit someone else. Merrill always loves visitors."

"I'm going to bed," Carver says abruptly, pushing up from the couch with so little warning Hawke nearly topples over into his vacant seat. "Don't, ah. Don't tell Merrill I'm here yet. I'll tell her myself."

"Of course. Good night, brother," Hawke says, almost entirely keeping back her grin, but as Carver's back disappears through the open doorway she can't help but call after him: "And shave that terrible beard!"

—

"I am huge," Hawke says meditatively. "I am a landship. Come to me, elves; I will carry you to the homeland without you even bumping elbows."

"At least two could fit comfortably," Merrill agrees, tying off the last row of the baby blanket she has been knitting. "But it does seem to lack something without the sails."

—

"Here you are."

"Here I am," Hawke mumbles into her arms, not bothering to raise her head. She knows what she looks like, her hair undone and uncombed, clad only in a long loose black shirt, bent over the writing desk in her room with a dozen half-finished letters scattered around her in the afternoon sunlight. And yet, she cannot make herself care in the slightest. "I was being a responsible Champion. Then I got tired."

Fenris's hand settles on the nape of her neck. "You did not have to do this now."

"Had to be done sometime." She heaves a sigh, spreads her knees a little wider to accommodate the weighty girth of her unborn child. "I wish this little idiot would take a hint from that. Prompt, decisive action, that's what we need."

"It's a little early, yet."

"You, serah, do not have to sling this thing around morning, noon, and night." Hawke pushes her face a little further into the crook of her elbow, unable to keep back the prickle of unexpected tears. "Fenris, I am so sick of being pregnant."

The hand on her neck moves lower, Fenris's thumb beginning to dig circles into the muscles between her shoulders. "You have not been sleeping well."

"I'm sure that's not helping."

Fenris's other hand comes up to join the first, his thumbs probing down either side of her spine in long, deep strokes. Methodically, his fingers work all the way to the small of her back; there he lingers, rubbing out the worst of the aches that have plagued her for two months and more. Hawke groans despite herself, shifting her head on her arms so that her spine lies straight; when he is finished at her waist Fenris begins his way up again, his fingers strong and deep and sure and not dainty in the slightest, whatever Carver might think. The circling pressure moves from her shoulders to her neck, teasing out the tension that has been hiding at the base of her skull, and this time when Hawke groans she does not miss the soft chuckle Fenris gives in response.

"I don't even care," Hawke mutters into the desk, her eyes clenched shut. "Laugh all you want. Just don't stop."

"As you wish," Fenris tells her, his voice low and amused, and he doesn't.

Between Fenris's extraordinary fingers and the warmth of the afternoon sun, Hawke loses track of the hour. When she raises her head at last it is as blearily as a child, her vision hazy, every muscle in her back and neck rolling loose with the release of tension. She blinks up at Fenris, lazy and sated; he stands above her with crossed arms and an entirely too-satisfied smile on his face, and she can't even find the energy to begrudge it.

"You've done that before," she says without thinking, and it is not until his smile dims that she realizes. _Idiot!_

But he seems neither angered nor embittered by whatever memory he keeps of this; instead he says only, "By choice, this time," and lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

"Come here," she says, and hooks a finger into his jerkin between clasps until he bends to kiss her. His mouth is—hot, and eager, and despite the comfortable lassitude still spiraling through her limbs Hawke feels something in her spark to a deeper alertness. "Come here," she says again when he draws back, her voice thicker, more inviting, and without releasing his shirt she pushes up from the desk chair and tugs him backwards in the rough direction of the bed.

"You are tired," Fenris tells her, his mouth on the skin beneath her ear, his hands twisting into her black shirt, his weight moving to cage her against the side of the mattress.

"Not that tired," Hawke starts, but the words vanish into a gasp as his teeth close gently over the base of her neck. "Of course, if you're _busy_—"

Fenris smirks, a hot curling thing that spikes an answering call deep in the pit of her belly, and abruptly Hawke finds herself on her back on the rumpled coverlet, her head almost entirely centered on one of her softer pillows. Fenris pauses only a moment to pull his shirt over his head; then, bare to the waist, he kneels beside her on the bed and drops his mouth to hers.

"See," Hawke says between kisses, her fingers tangling in Fenris's hair, "this is the problem."

He moves his mouth to her throat, his fingers to the top buttons of her shirt. "What is, Hawke?"

"This. One smooth move and you think you're clever; one good—oh, _damn—_"

She arches back on the bed, Fenris's hand warm and deliberate as it slides beneath her shirt to her breast. Distantly, she thinks it is good she is not so sore as she once was—this would be rather less pleasant, otherwise—but somehow between his efforts and hers they manage to get the rest of her buttons free, manage to extricate her arms from the sudden constriction of her clothing. Fenris does not even falter, the same intensity that drives the rest of his life focused on her here with almost frightening purpose, but Hawke has no such defense against distractions as she looks down the curve of her enormous stomach, and despite Fenris's lips doing all sorts of interesting things to her collarbone, she cannot help but rake one hand through her unbound hair and sigh.

Fenris stills, looks up. "Are you well?"

"Of course," Hawke says, suddenly embarrassed, and when he leans up to kiss her she curls one hand around the back of his neck, keeping his mouth to hers until she is quite certain she has assured him of exactly how _all right _she is. "I was just wondering if I'll ever see my feet again."

"Ah," Fenris murmurs after a moment; he kisses her once more, then presses his lips to the rise of her cheek, gently, and the afternoon sunlight dances down the lyrium etched into his back as he sits up.

Hawke props herself on one elbow. "Where are you going?"

"To remind you of your feet," Fenris says over his bare shoulder, and plucks her ankle from the bed.

Even so, it is not until his knuckles begin to dig into the arch of her foot that Hawke realizes what he means to do. This does not last so long as earlier, the both of them too eager and impatient to wait; still, Fenris is nothing if not thorough, his fingers digging under the balls of each foot, down the arches, around the base of her heel where the swelling is worst. By the end of it Hawke is panting, sweating; Fenris is little better, his eyes dark and intent as he moves with quick, spare motions to lie alongside her again.

This kiss is nothing like the earlier ones, nothing of gentleness or composure left in either of them. Hawke cannot get him close enough; if he cannot pin her to the bed as she wishes she will have the next best thing, and she drags the tips of her fingernails up his sides, along his shoulders as he slides closer beside her. "You always did have clever fingers," she mutters into his mouth, smiling despite herself.

Fenris draws back, holds her gaze. One hand comes to splay hot over the curve of her naked hip. "Is that a request?" he asks, his voice so deep it rumbles in her chest.

Hawke blinks; then his meaning catches hold and a shiver ripples its way down her spine, raising gooseflesh along her chest and arms. "I'd be happy to return the favor," she says, husky enough that she barely recognizes it.

Fenris brushes his mouth over her ear. "As you wish," he murmurs, smirk obvious even in his voice, and then his hand slides lower, and Hawke throws an arm across her eyes and laughs.

They do not speak again for a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:** I'm so sorry for the delay! This weekend got a bit hectic. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this last installment, and thank you all for reading. I'd love to hear what you think. :)

* * *

"Sister!"

The whisper hisses out of the dark, ominous as a cawing crow. Hawke ignores it, circling around the end of the bench; a moment later the front door creaks shut with a hollow boom, and heavy footsteps tap one-two-three across uncarpeted stone. "Sister," comes the whisper again, and as the pale face looms out of the shadows behind her Hawke whirls with both hands on her hips.

"_What_, Carver?"

He flinches back, startled at her hissed vitriol. "What are you doing down here? There's still more than an hour to dawn."

"I am _walking_," Hawke says acidly, resuming her little circle around the bench in her great hall. "Come on, Carver. I know they teach you some things in the world of the Wardens."

"We know how to tell time," he offers, though Hawke loses her chance to retort when another sharp cramp clenches pointy little fingers into her back.

"Wonderful," she says at last, though her breath is a little thin and she isn't entirely sure what she's responding to. "Now, if you please, go to bed."

But instead Carver watches her make another circle around the bench, the knuckles of both fists pressed into the small of her back.

After a long, excruciating moment, he says, "Are you in labor?"

"No! Absolutely not!"

"…_Are_ you?"

"Maybe!" Hawke snaps, and when Carver goes pale and trembly she blows out a short, frustrated breath and stalks her stilting way around the end of the bench until she can prod him in the breastbone. "Stop panicking."

"I'm not panicking. I should go get Fenris. Does Fenris know?"

Hawke narrows her eyes—but before she can speak another pang claws up her insides, shorter than the last but no less potent, and by the time it passes her poking finger has become a fist in Carver's shirt. "No," she grits out. "You are not going to wake Fenris. You are going to let him sleep for a few more hours, and then _I_ am going to go wake him up and _you _are going to go get Anders."

"I—but—all _right_, don't choke me, but—why?"

Hawke closes her eyes, struggling for composure. "Because in the end _someone _is going to need to have their wits about them, and since I'm the one giving birth and _you _are apparently coming apart like a dandelion tuft in a strong breeze, it's going to have to be Fenris. Which means he needs all the sleep he can get, which _means—_"

"Leave him alone for the moment. I've got it."

Still, his look of concern does not ease, even when Hawke pushes him down to the bench to stop his hovering. The labor pains—_if_ that's what they are; she's not entirely convinced—are not quite regular, coming in waves a few minutes apart and then split by almost a quarter-hour. She does not particularly care for uncertainty.

But as dawn pales her great hall grey and then rose-pink and the contractions begin to even out, even the Champion of Kirkwall finds herself admitting defeat at last. "All right," she mutters, sighing at the interminable stairway stretching up to the second floor. "Help me upstairs and let's…get this started, I suppose."

The stairs pass without incident, the walk to her room equally calm, and as Carver releases her elbow at her open doorway Hawke cannot pretend she does not feel the first stirrings of excitement. Or indigestion, she supposes, sinking down on the side of the bed where Fenris has sprawled on his stomach, one arm hidden beneath his pillow, the other curved up near his face.

Hawke would like to sleep on her stomach again.

Still, she keeps her touch gentle as she smoothes the hair from his sleeping face, as she curls her hand over his bare shoulder. "Fenris?"

He stirs with a low mumble; then his eyes open and he comes awake all at once, as he has for as long as she's known him, and his green gaze fixes tiredly on her face. "Hawke?"

"Sorry," she says softly, her voice abruptly trembling, "but I think it's time."

Fenris blinks at her—then his eyes shoot to her stomach and he sits up so quickly he nearly strikes Hawke with his forehead. "Time," he repeats, something lost and wondering in his voice.

"Get dressed," she suggests, kissing him without lingering. "I'll meet you downstairs. I have to walk a little more or my spine's going to snap in half."

"Yes," Fenris breathes, staring at her with something uncomfortably close to open affection, and before Hawke can embarrass either herself or Carver she stands and makes her way to the door.

Carver picks up her elbow again as she reaches him, a thoughtful look in his eyes, and halfway down the stairs, he begins, "You really…"

She looks up at him as they reach the bottom. "What?"

He stops, gripping her shoulders with both hands. "You really love him."

Her mouth quirks. "Funnily enough, I do. Does that make you squeamish?"

"No," Carver tells her, pulling her into a rough embrace. "Just glad."

"Thank you," Hawke says into his shirt, when she can speak, and for a little while she lets herself be held.

—

It is not, as labors go, particularly graceful.

Hawke paces the great hall well into morning, barely managing to muster cordial greetings for a sleep-dazed, bewildered Anders when Carver arrives with him in tow. She snaps at and subsequently apologizes to every member of her household, including Sandal (he is, blessedly, unoffended, though Hawke feels utterly wretched all the way through the next contraction). Even Fenris is spared little of her unfocused irritation, though he too seems inclined not to take it to heart, and the gratitude she feels at that patience is almost enough to curb her tongue when Merrill, Sebastian, _and _Varric show up at her front door with flowers and too-innocent smiles.

Orana takes the flowers with grace and goes to find water. Sebastian takes a seat beside Fenris on the bench before the unlit hearth. Hawke takes herself upstairs, as far from people as she can get, and pretends her belly is not trying to squeeze itself inside out through a cheese grater.

Eventually, as she eases through the end of another cramp—closer together now, and lasting longer, blast them—there's a knock on her half-open door. Hawke scowls at the window above her desk without turning. "Anders, I care deeply for you, but if you tell me to stay calm _one_ more time I'm going to feed you your feathers."

"An interesting image," Aveline says dryly, and Hawke swivels in surprise as she closes the door behind her with a soft click. "But I can promise I won't tell you to do anything at the moment."

"Oh, good," Hawke says, a half-smile tugging at her mouth at the sight of Aveline, armorless, her civilian clothes a uniform that doesn't quite fit. "I didn't expect you until later."

Aveline shakes her head, crossing to the bed. Her arms are full of clean towels and a large, thick sheet; with brusque efficiency she drapes the sheet over the already-made bed, sets a careful layer of towels over the middle of it. "Believe it or not, Donnic was fretting about you two worse than I was. He's downstairs with Fenris, trying to calm him down with stories about watching his brothers be born."

Hawke blinks. "Did Fenris seem worried?"

A soft snort slips free as Aveline replaces the pillows against the headboard. "Not especially."

"Well. _I'm _comforted to have you here."

"Wouldn't find me anywhere else, Hawke," Aveline tells her, hands on her hips, surveying the bed in satisfaction before looking to Hawke. "How's the labor coming?"

"Agonizingly slowly. Anders keeps saying it's normal. I keep saying there's a reason they give people whiskey before they cut an arm off."

"To numb the pain?"

"That, too. Mostly I just miss being able to drink."

Aveline laughs when Hawke does, but a sudden tight cramp cuts off the end of it, and Hawke hisses as she bends forward, her hand clenching around the lip of the writing desk. Seconds pass—more than before, more than she is quite prepared to bear, and as soon as this child has life she is going to _kill _it—but after perhaps forty-five seconds the cramp begins to ease, and Hawke's gasping breaths find their way to steadiness again.

"You all right?" Aveline asks, her voice low.

Hawke wipes a bit of sweat from her forehead before waving her hand in dismissal, and Aveline flinches at the unwelcome spray. "Sorry. But—yes. Just…_so _ready for this to be over."

"Except then a whole new set of problems start."

"Thanks for the reminder. I don't know how women do this more than once."

"I hear that eventually, mothers forget the pain."

"They'd have to. To propagate the species if nothing else. I mean, my mother did it twice—and with _twins_! I can't even imagine."

"She must have decided to try to get it right the second time," Aveline says, her voice light and teasing, but—

—but it is far, far too late, and rather than meet the sympathy in Aveline's eyes Hawke turns to put her other palm on the desk as well, staring out the tall glass-paned window at the sunny Kirkwall streets below. She recognizes a few of the brightly-colored figures going about their lives below: the handsome prostitute from the Rose; the Chantry sister with the long black hair; the nosy wife from the mansion to the left currently gesturing wildly at Hawke's home, the absentminded scholar she speaks to peering up in bemusement. Frankly, Hawke isn't even sure he knows her name even though he's lived opposite her for three years—but even this distraction is not enough to soothe the cold aching place behind her ribs, the open wound that grief has left behind after eating her heart.

Across the square, a pair of larks alights on a high rooftop. They stare at each other, at the square below; then they lift free for the dubious superiority of the neighboring home in long, swooping arcs, without signal, without sound. Hawke says, "She should be here for this."

There's a long silence, just hard enough for regret, and at last a rustle as Aveline sits heavily on the edge of the sheet-draped bed. "You're right. She should."

"I keep—" Hawke tries, but the word tangles in the sorrow at the base of her throat. "I keep wondering what advice she'd have given me." She snorts. The sound is almost convincing. "Probably to sling Fenris over my shoulder and find the first boat to Ferelden."

"I can't imagine Fenris putting up with much slinging."

"She liked him, you know. I don't think she understood him, but…" Hawke blinks, blinks again. "She told me once that she liked him very much."

"High praise, from Leandra."

"She thought he was very polite. She wanted him to eat more. Oh, _flames_. Why are we talking about this?"

"You wanted advice." Aveline stands, crosses the room until she can rest one hand on Hawke's shoulder. "It's not the same thing, but…I can tell you what she told me, once, when I was first—how does Isabela keep saying it?—stupid over Donnic."

"You were never stupid. Oblivious, maybe."

"Hush up, kettle. I was on patrol. It was near dusk and Leandra was outside pulling away some of that stray ivy from your windows; I stopped to say hello and we got to talking." Aveline steps closer, her eyes turning out the window to the square below, as if memory might paint a quieter, dusk-grey evening over the living street. "I don't remember how it came up, but I…told her how difficult it had been to stop seeing Wesley in every man I met. How much I still missed him. And then she patted my hand, and I remembered that she'd lost both her husband and a daughter, and I couldn't believe what a numbskull I'd been."

Hawke laughs despite herself, despite the prickling tears behind her eyes. Bethany should be here, too; Bethany of all people would have relished the arrival of this child. But Aveline does not allow her to wallow, bumping Hawke's shoulder with her own as she continues. "And while I was in the middle of feeling both very lonely and very foolish, she gave me a hug and told me that it takes great strength to love again after loss. That there are times when it just doesn't seem worth it. But sometimes, if you give it a chance, the love that comes after grief can seem all the sweeter for knowing what came before it."

Hawke does not cry. She does not. She has neither the strength to spare nor the wherewithal to stop once she's started, so she gulps and swallows and blinks quickly enough to blur the larks on their rooftop, and then she says, when she can, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Aveline murmurs, letting her head rest briefly against Hawke's own.

But the moment does not last. As if her child has sensed the maudlin mood in need of breaking, a fierce, hot cramp seizes Hawke's stomach from navel to spine, and any lingering grief vanishes like smoke before the more insistent solidity of labor. Hawke bends forward, sucking in quick breaths through her teeth; when it is over she shakes her head, half-laughing, forcing herself to relieve her iron-clenched grip on Aveline's forearm.

"I think you had the right of it," she tells her. "I don't see a single good reason why the men shouldn't be the ones pushing the children out their asses."

Aveline rubs her forearm and laughs. "I'll pass that on to Donnic."

"Though, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure if Fenris could."

"Oh?"

"Skinny hips. I hear that's not the best for bearing children."

"Or—Maker. It could be worse than that."

"What do you mean?"

"He would be _even moodier _than he is now."

And even like this, even with old grief sitting hard in her chest and older memories shading the sunlit room, Hawke can do nothing but laugh.

—

Anders confines her to bed just after mid-morning. The labor pains grip her now more often than not, each one longer and harder than the last. She thinks, distantly, that it is a good thing she has already so little dignity to lose; between the grunting and the open splay of her legs baring her to Anders, Orana, and Fenris alike, she can't imagine she has much left.

"Damn," she gasps, her head craning towards her feet as she pushes. "Damn, damn, damn damn damn _shit—_"

"It's crowned," Anders tells her, lifting his head long enough from between her thighs to grin. His coat is across the room, his hair tousled across his forehead, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and Isabela would have _died_—but the pirate queen is not here and Hawke is not surprised, and she collapses into the pillows piled behind her with a groan.

"Crowning just means there's more still to come."

"Well, we could stop here. You'd just have—oh, a tenth of a baby to carry around. Maybe an eighth."

"Don't you _dare _joke about that," Hawke says, her voice sharper than she means it, and Orana clucks as she presses a cool cloth to Hawke's forehead. Fenris says nothing, but his grip on her hand tightens.

He is so _quiet_. Has been all morning, ever since he and Anders had taken Aveline's place in her room almost two hours ago. He has barely moved from where he stands at Hawke's shoulder, even when the first real cramp had set her sparking with flecked lightning; even now his eyes are huge and fixed on her, the lines of his throat whipcord-tight, his breathing so shallow he might as well be either dead or a very indifferent breeze. She can't read his face, when she looks up at him to find him watching her: he is not angry and he is not afraid and he is not—_pleased_, not really. If anything it is more a dreadful joy, a gladness seen through the colored glass of both anticipation and anxiety.

Hawke thinks she understands that.

But another cramping, desperate need to _push _seizes her, tearing her from her pleasantly painless introspection, and when Anders lowers one hand from her thigh to a rather large _something _between her legs, her heart lurches. "Come on," Anders says, his eyes trained on whatever is pushing its way out of her. "Come on, Hawke. Push, push, come on—"

"Can't," she says, the word heaving out of her between gasps as she tries even so, and after another handful of seconds her trembling grip gives way and she falls back against the bed.

Anders offers her a distracted smile, patting the inside of her knee. "You're close. So close. One more! Maybe two."

Hawke laughs and stares up at the ceiling, blinking away sweat from her eyelashes, feeling it roll across her temples into her hair. "You know, it did _not _look this hard in Lady Rolin's tapestry."

"Just be patient."

"No! Someone go find me—Orana, go find me a damn pry bar. I'll solve this problem."

There's a soft snort at her shoulder, and Hawke looks up to see Fenris smiling. "A vivid suggestion, Hawke," he tells her quietly.

She squeezes his hand in answer. She—tries to squeeze his hand in answer. Then she says, "Fenris, I love you dearly, but if you don't relax you're going to break every one of my fingers."

He starts, looks down; then with a noise like a stiff door creaking he unfolds his fingers from around hers, both their hands striped red and white with pressure and strain. Hawke shakes out her fingers, bends and flexes them with effort, and carefully—less desperately—takes his hand again.

"Don't let go," she tells him at his look, and crooks a smile. "Just don't break me."

"I will try," he murmurs, the corner of his mouth turning up, but before Hawke can muster any response another labor pain shudders up her stomach, hot fingers twisting her insides into a great sizzling knot.

"Andraste," Anders says as Hawke groans. "I think this is it. Push. Hawke, push—"

"I – am – _pushing!_" she grits out through clenched teeth, her eyes stinging with sweat, her grip on Fenris's hand just as tight and tighter than his ever was—

Something gives way inside her with a slick, wet noise—there's a slight tug as Anders reaches between her legs, eyes focused on something she can't see—

And then, unbearable relief.

Hawke deflates, crumpling into the pillows like a wrung rag. Her heart still races, the muscles of her thighs quivering with strain—but none of that matters in the face of the bloody little squirming infant Anders lifts in his arms. Orana is already there, rubbing the child's arms briskly with clean towels, drying the fine black hair that curls close to its head.

"Oh, Hawke," Anders says softly, the constant fervor behind his voice stilled for a moment as he looks at the little scrunched face in his arms, the aimless clenching of soft, tiny hands, the toothless mouth working its way open to let out a little wail from littler lungs. "Look what you did."

She swallows. Swallows again, tries to find breath beneath the sudden blinding ache in her chest. She is—too small for this. "Well? What is it?" She pauses. "A half-elf?"

"A girl," Anders says as Orana neatly cuts the cord and ties it. "A girl. A healthy girl."

Hawke twists on the pillows to look up at Fenris. All she can see at first is the underside of his jaw; then he looks down at her blankly, lips parted on some voiceless, nameless word. She smiles, murmurs, "Leda."

"Leda," Fenris repeats numbly, and even as she watches his already pale cheeks fade paler, and with a soft breath he begins to sway backwards.

Hawke tugs on his hand hard, twice, until he looks at her again. "Sit down," she advises, and he sinks silently to the edge of the bed.

Then Anders is there, bending towards them with their dry, cleaned child as Orana clears away the linens soiled with both blood and afterbirth. "Here," he says, and the moment in which Hawke feels the weight of her daughter settle into her arms is profound enough to silence her, to know that everything, everything has changed irrevocably: her life divided from this moment into _before _and _after_.

She is going to burst.

Fenris's arm comes around her back as he leans forward, as Hawke adjusts her daughter's head against her shoulder. She says, wet sobs of laughter tearing from her throat, "Look at her. She looks like a little abomination."

"_Mistress_," Orana says from across the room, chiding, "she does not. She's beautiful."

"She's a beautiful abomination with a pointy head and no teeth." Hawke touches her nose, her wide mouth, curves one finger around the blunted tips of the child's ears. Not elven—nowhere near her father's—but not quite human either. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Healthy lungs, as evidenced by the cries that still slip free as she is jostled. "Good morning, you wrinkly darling. Welcome to the world."

"She is—" Fenris says, his voice low and rough and unsteady and _startled _as he carefully—so carefully—curls his hand around the back of his daughter's head, "so small."

"I know. I was honestly expecting something the size of a mabari."

Fenris glances at her, eyebrow lifted, but then their daughter stirs and squirms and opens her eyes, and Hawke grins to see the familiar green gaze blinking up at her in softened miniature. "Oh," she breathes, "but you're going to break _hearts._"

Fenris's hand tightens into the sheet at her hip. His weight comes harder against her back as if he cannot quite stay still, lyrium flicking in faint shimmers up his arms and down them again, and when Hawke leans her head briefly against his temple she can feel the tremors running along his spine. He says, roughly, "It is—too much."

The words are an echo of another memory, another moment in this same room—but Hawke knows Fenris better now than she did then, and as his ear comes to press against her cheek, as his fingers slide from his daughter's hair to her shoulder, her throat, there is no room left in Hawke's overfull heart for fear.

After a little while, Anders reclaims the infant long enough to examine her more thoroughly with magic and hands alike, long enough for Orana and Fenris to remove the last sheets and towels and help Hawke wash herself before changing into a clean nightshirt. Then, after a brief moment of healing magic between her legs and through her unbearably sore back, she is at last in the wordless comfort of her own bed, under her own covers, supported by both clean pillows and Orana's delicate touch as she settles gingerly against the headboard.

"All done," Anders says, smiling as he crosses the room again, but Hawke jerks her head to where Fenris stands at the nearby window, his hand still on the latch after opening it to the cool sunlit breezes that filter in from the coast.

"His turn," she tells him, and when Fenris balks, she adds, biting back a smile, "And if he doesn't take her, drop her."

Fenris makes an inarticulate noise and his arms come out like lightning; then, as he finds himself with an abrupt armful of infant, he turns to Hawke and glares. "That was not necessary."

She smirks. "Whatever you say, love."

His lip curls in an irritation that swiftly fades as he looks down at his unexpected burden. Anders stands near, watching just closely enough to be sure they are both secure, and when Fenris at last lets out his held breath Anders gives a short nod and smiles at Hawke. "I'm off, then. I'll be downstairs if you need me, Hawke."

"Mage," Fenris says first, silencing Hawke's thanks in her throat, and looks up. His eyes are very serious. "Anders. I am grateful."

"You're welcome," says Anders, startlement giving way to a sort of pleased contentment, and Hawke grins at his wink.

Still, as the room quiets, as Anders and Orana finish the last of their cleaning and slip out of the room, as Hawke watches Fenris adjust the weight of his daughter in his arms, her grin begins to fade. Tiny hands slip free, swing through air in confusion before Fenris catches them in his fingers and carefully tucks them beneath the blanket again; enormous eyes blink open, their green deep and rich and framed by black lashes, glancing without purpose at the walls and window before fixing on Fenris's face. On her father's face.

Then Fenris closes his own eyes and gently presses his mouth to his daughter's forehead, and Hawke begins to cry.

It is not much, and it certainly isn't loud; rather, it is the overwhelming mute relief of a battle over and done, a victory without price, a living breathing little soul brought out of nothing into her father's arms, without harm, without lasting pain. The sound stifles well enough in her palm, Hawke determined above all else to allow Fenris the privacy of this moment; and yet, as he shifts his daughter's head against his heart, as he carries her to the better, clearer light of the open window, Hawke suspects that even if she were to shout his name he would not hear her.

He turns, leans one shoulder against the stonework jamb so that her small face falls full in the sun, so that she may see the colorful blurs of scarlet and gold and orange of the square below. His daughter blinks, shocked, at the light (one, two, three blinks, Hawke counts, and knows she must be very shocked indeed); then all at once her face crumbles and she drags in a tiny, massive breath.

"Hush," Fenris murmurs, and puts the pad of his thumb to her chin, to the place where his own markings wind like riverbeds beneath his mouth. She lets out a short, hiccuping breath; Fenris moves to cup her head with his hand, long fingers easing across the softened points of her ear. Gently, he says again, "Hush."

And she hushes.

Hawke does not speak, her hand falling away from her mouth, her tears receding as she watches Fenris, Fenris who has torn hearts from men, Fenris who denied all semblance of affection for the first three years of their friendship, who once did not know what it meant to touch someone in gentleness—hold his infant daughter close against his chest to soothe her. His discomfort, his hesitation—are gone as if they had never been. It is not that he has been _meant _for this any more than she has, not with their histories between them, not with the uncertainty of Kirkwall's fate still hanging above them like a sword, but—

But he _stays _nonetheless. And will stay. And will marry her, not out of duty but by choice, because he wishes to, because there is a love between them strong enough to bear even this weight and be made greater for the bearing of it.

Because he is a father holding his daughter for the first time.

She will not weep for that. It is too precious.

Eventually, when the room's noontime warmth and her own exhaustion combine to turn her limbs leaden, Hawke lets out a soft sigh. Fenris, still leaning against the windowsill, looks to her without shifting the child sleeping at his heart. He murmurs, "Are you all right?"

"Yes. Just tired." She smiles. "Have you got her, for a little while?"

Fenris stands, then, and crosses to her side with no trace of hesitation. He bends carefully, slides his free hand into Hawke's hair at the base of her neck, slants his mouth across hers in an answer that requires no words. When it is over, he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers, and he says, quietly, "I have her."

"Then she's all yours," Hawke tells him.

He smiles, kisses her again; then the door closes softly behind them, and Hawke sleeps.

—

When she wakes again it is to the long gold light of late afternoon spilling in through her window, pooling in the twists and folds of her crimson coverlet. Hawke yawns, stretches, puts one hand to her empty stomach—empty of more than infant, she realizes; she is _hungry_—and it is not until the shadow moves in her open window that Hawke realizes she is not alone.

"Hello, sweet thing," Isabela says, winking from where she sits sideways on the sunlit sill, and looks down again at the child sleeping in her arms.

Hawke musters a sleepy smile and pushes to one elbow. "I didn't know you were coming," she says by way of explanation, and knuckles a bit of grit from one eye.

"Hadn't planned on it. But your window was open, and I thought—why _not _visit you while you're in bed in an almost certain state of undress? Really, it wasn't even a choice."

"And the baby?"

"Stole it. Why, are you missing one?"

"I don't know. Something seems so familiar about her."

"Mm. Well, I did lift her right out from under the aquiline nose of one serah Fenris, elf."

"That must be it. I hear he's a new father."

"Has his eyes, anyway," Isabela says, and, as if on cue, they open bleary and blinking. She shifts the baby's weight so that the tiny wrapped feet press against Isabela's stomach and her small head rests supported by her bent, booted knee; the child makes a soft, bemused noise of protest, then falls still again, eyes wide and fixed to Isabela's face.

Isabela dips forward, just enough that a few strands of dark, sea-roughened hair slip along her cheek, just enough that the heavy gold of her necklace catches a breath of burnished light to lick fire. Hawke's daughter blinks again, eyes drawn to its etched surface, and Isabela smiles to see it as her thumb draws down the soft, hours-old cheek. Isabela's eyes, half-shadowed in silhouette, are—very soft.

And then, because she is Isabela and because Isabela does not hesitate to love things, she cups the child's cheeks in her hand and kisses her gently on the forehead, the nose, the mouth. Leda's green eyes cross as they try to follow her, her tiny lips twisting, and Isabela laughs as she leans back against the window's frame. "What do you think, Hawke?" she asks, grinning. "Teach her a sea shanty and I could put her right on the prow."

"You'd have to tie her in place, I think. But she's a little young for that kind of thing."

"I can come back in a few days." Isabela offers, but the amusement goes out of her voice as she touches the small cheek again, as the green eyes begin to droop. "She's beautiful, Hawke."

"Glad you like her. She's going to be sticking around for a while."

"You know she's already got Carver wrapped around her little finger."

Hawke laughs. "Her father's not much better."

Isabela snorts, kicking the foot that dangles from the sill, then glances to Hawke. "You look rather unwilted for a woman who just gave birth, you know. I'd have you this moment if you hadn't just pushed out what amounts to a small cask of rum."

"That's so sweet. What, do you want sordid stories of labor?"

"I get enough sordid in my own nightly activities, thank you," Isabela says with a mock shudder. "Besides, I heard you shat yourself."

"The miracle of birth."

"Kinky."

Hawke sighs, easing up into the pillows. "Honestly, a dozen Arishoks would have been less difficult."

"Smell about the same, though."

"You're such a charmer."

"Believe me, I know." Isabela winks, sliding from the sill with babe in arms. "Lucky for you, I'm an honest thief."

Hawke lifts her arms for her daughter as Isabela hands her over, and smiles despite herself as her daughter lets out a soft huff and settles, eyes closing, breath evening out in something like comfort. "Giving back all the treasures you steal? You'll ruin your reputation."

Isabela kisses Hawke briefly on the forehead before straightening. "My reputation is exactly what I want it to be."

"I would expect no less," Fenris says from the doorway, one black eyebrow lifted in amusement as he pads into the room.

"_Well_," Isabela says, cocking her hip. "If it isn't the proud papa. Oh, well—I was done in here anyway, I suppose." Hawke begins to protest, but Isabela waves a hand, cutting her off. "There's too much domesticity in here for me. Actually, I think I'm going to go see what your brother's learned while he was away."

"How to tell time," Hawke mutters, grinning, and adds, "Isabela—thanks."

"Anytime, pet," she says with a wink; then she grasps Fenris's face in both hands and kisses his forehead, too—and she is gone.

Fenris blinks, touching his hair, but when Hawke laughs he shakes himself and comes to join her on the bed. "How do you feel?"

"Better. Hungry," she tells him honestly, but she pulls him back to the coverlet as he starts to rise. "Later. I'll be all right for a little while longer. And Leda must be starving, for that matter; I'll feed her in just a moment. Who's still downstairs?"

"Your brother," Fenris says, ticking them off his fingers. "Orana. Aveline and Donnic. Merrill. Sebastian and Varric have gone for an early dinner with the—with Anders, but they planned to return before nightfall. They are all…eager to see you."

Hawke smiles, leans against his shoulder. "A full house, then."

"For the moment." Fenris's arm comes around her, awkwardly at first and then more sure, but the kiss he presses to her mouth has nothing of uncertainty in it. He says softly, "It will be different now."

"Yes. Do you mind?"

"No." His fingers stroke down her cheek, her neck. "And you?"

She looks up into green eyes, warm and bright under the white hair she loves so well, the half-smile on his lips that she loves better. "Never."

The baby yawns. Hawke pulls her closer between them as Fenris lifts his feet to the bed that must have seen so many of her family's births over the decades, and as Fenris settles she yawns so widely herself her jaw cracks. Fenris laughs, guides her head to his shoulder, tugs the coverlet more securely against her waist as he stretches out beside her. It is an easy thing after that to allow her eyelids to drift almost closed, to rest her forehead against the curve of his neck where the lyrium stretches up towards his jaw, to let every part of her go loose and quiet as the afternoon sunbeams drape across her shoulders to warm her, across her daughter's face to cast her in light.

She can feel Fenris's heartbeat at the base of his throat. It keeps time measured slow and steady, constant as a tide beneath the sharper higher rhythm of her own, two unlike cadences to fall so well together; and when she rests her hand on her sleeping daughter's chest it is the last piece of the tuneless song she listens for, quick and new and strong. They beat slightly out of time with each other, but that, Hawke thinks, is right, too. They are not the lesser for it.

Only his heart and their daughter's heart and her own heart following after, and somewhere between the three of them, Hawke thinks she hears something like home.

—

end.


End file.
